


Ccjyright 


COMIGHT DEPOSIT. 


I 




THE CAPTIVE HERD 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

FLOWERS OF THE WIND 
THE NEW WORLD 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


BY 

G. MURRAY ATKIN 


AUTHOR OF “FLOWERS OF THE WIND” AND 
“THE NEW WORLD” 


NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 




Copyright, 1922, 

By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 





©CI.A681960 


PUNTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 




SEP 27 1922 

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To 

F. A. H. 





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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Individual 1 

The Clepsedba ......... 105 

The Heed 215 



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PART ONE 
THE INDIVIDUAL 


As oft from storms light craft will make for shore 
And hug the shelter of some safe lagoon, 

Mooring their barks, wild gypsies from the sea; 

So from lifers tumult come there to the tribe 
The nomads, who did wander far awhile, 

But by the winds were driven home again 
Within the fold, safe captive to the Herd. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


CHAPTER I 

The sun was shining on the white buildings 
of Manhattan. It had shone thus for years 
ere it lighted Vinevar’s daily path through the 
streets of the metropolis to his office. It would 
shine years after his interesting personality 
would be seen in its streets no more. But when 
his thin figure, his parchment-like face illumined 
by two burning eyes, would have returned to 
the dust from whence they came, the effect of 
his projects, his power, his progress would be 
felt — even in Manhattan. 

Vinevar drove through the crowded verisi- 
militude of cosmopolitan life. Isaacson was 
waiting for him at his office to discuss with him 
the carrying out of a new project. As he en- 
tered the office, he nodded to Isaacson, but 
although he was at least half an hour late, he 
made no apology. He considered himself too 
important to need the placid art of conciliation. 
He glanced at his writing table, at the pile of 
3 


4 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


letters already opened by his secretary await- 
ing his answer, letters representing appeals, 
appointments, interests, hut no desires. Vine- 
var was a man with no desires. 

“I have great need of all my time, Isaacson. 
What is it? In the autumn of this year a 
change will be effected at Washington. Wilson 
will go out. A new man will take his place, 
but whoever is nominally the mouthpiece of the 
cabinet, my race must be represented force- 
fully and by the right man. There is no luck 
in ministerial affairs. We leave nothing to 
chance. What is it about which you wish to 
consult me?” 

He did not take a chair, hut kept walking 
up and down as if the very echo of his own 
footsteps goaded him on and would not let him 
rest. “What advice do you want of me?” he 
asked solenmly. 

Isaacson turned towards him as a sunflower 
turns to the sun, and as the petals of a sun- 
flower reflect the brightness of its rays, Isaac- 
son’s face brightened as it turned to Vinevar. 

“I have heard of a young bond dealer, a 
man to suit om* purpose. His mother was a 
Russian, his father an Englishman with the 
usual English advantages, including a good 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


5 


pubKc school training. They emigrated to 
Canada, where their son was born. The son 
has been brought up in Canada. He was edu- 
cated at a public school. Then he had one year 
at college. His father died. Circumstances 
forced him to leave college and go into a bank, 
from there four years ago he went into a 
broker’s office. He has shown exceptional 
ability. I was in Canada, and I heard of this 
young man. It seemed he might be useful for 
our new project.” 

Vinevar gazed disdainfully at Isaacson. “Is 
his mother alive?” 

“No.” 

“His mother is dead? He has no home ties. 
He works as though work were a kind of 
fienzy.” 

“I fly high,” said Vinevar with a smile, “I 
must be sure of my wings.” The smile sud- 
denly disappeared from his face, and a cruel 
expression came over it. 

“We might try him and then, ‘if thine eye 
offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee.’ 
All threads cannot be woven into the cloak with- 
out seam.” 

“All Judaan,” said Isaacson nodding his 
head. 


6 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“All Judaan.” 

Vinevar flicked his pile of letters. 

“Yesterday,” he said, “I had a letter from 
Rothschild warning us, that in England the 
Jews are showing themselves not Englishmen, 
but a nation with a foreign policy of their own, 
and that policy hostile to the friends of Eng- 
land. Englishmen will not stand that. Roths- 
child has protested against it in an open letter 
to the Morning Post. He warns me, Isaacson, 
lest in our zeal we err, that the pure American 
is not more tolerant than the Englishman. 
Well, well, maybe, maybe, we shall see, what 
we shall see. ‘They have parted my raiment 
among them, and for my garment they have 
cast lots.’ In the glass of the future much is 
written. Send for the young man, Isaacson. 
If he is useful to the Cause pay him anything. 
If he prove not useful, cast him out. And now, 
Isaacson, be gone, be gone. The time is short, 
and I have much to do.” 

Isaacson left Vinevar’s office as a priest 
might have left the Holy of Holies. 


CHAPTER II 


When Vacla Melfort stood on the threshold 
of adult life, he had a peculiar antipathy to a 
fixed code of morals. “Let there be weeds in 
my garden,” he was wont to say. “If there 
is too much pruning there will be no growth.” 
And in his own peculiar way Vacla was sin- 
cere. 

The person that Vacla had loved was his 
mother, and with her death he saw life in an 
aspect that he chose to make as hard as he 
could. His father had already passed away, 
so circumstances had combined to harden and 
isolate him. His own bereavement had given 
him no sympathy with the suffering of others, 
it confirmed his intention to entrench himself 
in as great a secimity as possible. 

As far as youth is conscious at all, life was 
to him a journey, an extraordinary journey 
along two rails that led from night to night. 
Boredom, monotony, intrigue, interest, love, 
and hate were sign-posts by which the wise 
traveller paused as it befitted his mood. i 


8 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


The traveller has come from nothingness, 
and although he goes to nothingness, during no 
part of his journey does he allow himself to 
see again the growing nothingness. He sees 
no further than the flesh. As life thimders 
along, he has grasped one bleak truth. Feed 
the flesh, cultivate it, until like some quick- 
growing fungus it kills the life upon which it 
was grafted. The immensity of the flesh little 
by little will kiU the soul. What disunion! The 
thing of a moment destroying an immortahty. 
So the diseased tissue achieves its full develop- 
ment. It lives to spread its own disease. The 
tragedy of the flesh is accomplished, and man 
becomes a parasite. 

The significant thing about life at this angle 
is that it tarnishes. There is no annunciation 
of finer things to come. The flesh is pitiless. 
It takes at the last the toll from itself, but by 
that time the coiu’se of life has been changed 
fundamentally, the inevitable factors have done 
their work; the soul, the fine fragment of im- 
mortality has gone back to obscurity and noth- 
ingness. Man’s dream has failed. 

As he thus idly mused, Vacla Melfort leaned 
on the window-sill of a hotel bedroom, looking 
down at the groups, the men, the faces in the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


9 


street. The day was declining. On the table 
in the centre of the room behind him his bags 
were packed, and he was waiting for the porter 
to come and put them in the cab that was to 
take him to the station. Through the void of 
his window Vacla looked down upon the world 
of to-day; a world of intrigue and compro- 
mise. The groups, the men, if they were to 
speak, what would they say? Held together 
by intrigue, by mutual interest, would they 
ignorantly state that truth was vain? 

It is an impressive spectacle, the scuffling 
life in a public street. With the same detach- 
ment that the gods look down upon the earth, 
Vacla watched the moving shadows. Heaven 
and hell were within himself ; that was the earth. 
Little by little as the sky darkened, he leaned 
further on the window-sill watching the pass- 
ers-by, the people who exchange ideas, glances, 
grow impatient, angry, tender with each other 
and to-morrow disappear. Vacla loved himself 
with a sort of devotion. He never pictured 
himself as an angel of goodness, but as a spirit 
of mercilessness with a sharp sword. In the 
crowd below he saw a possible assuagement of 
himself, a fiery glimpse, that in the directing 
and the moulding of the objective of others, he 


10 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


might succeed perhaps in finding a cure for 
his own tragedy, his own thirst for a perpetual 
power. He saw no glory like that of a trium- 
phant ego. He did not mean to cross hastily 
over the earth’s surface. He meant to conquer 
it. He did not love mankind, he loved him- 
self: that was his curse, the infinite smallness 
of his belief. 

Turn where you wiU, everywhere you will 
find nothing exists alone. Love goes in pairs. 
Religion derives guidance in groups. The 
parts of the immeasurable universe are depend- 
ent one upon the other. And the essential out- 
lines of life teach that man is important only 
in the relation which he bears to the race as a 
whole. What Vacla saw in the street below 
were the groups, the faces, the shadows. What 
he did not see was the imperceptible relation 
between his own life and the life of the man 
in the street. 

All at once Vacla drew himself up from the 
window, and went back into the room. The 
air was heavy with the mixture of odoims that 
accrue within and without on a hot day. The 
comings and goings of the crowd, what were 
they to him? Life was inexorable; the great 
attribute was strength; the crime of ignorance 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


11 


was weakness and uncertainty. The weak he 
ignored and despised. With brute strength he 
would advance. He crossed the room and rang 
the bell for the porter. He was impatient to 
be gone. 

« jit 

That same evening found Mr. Isaacson sit- 
ting before his house ruminating, chewing the 
cud, as it were, intellectually. 

“It is now, or never,” he said to himself. “It 
is now or never.” 

He hovered undecidedly with a match sus- 
pended in the air, before striking it upon the 
sole of his boot. He was wondering if he had 
the courage to put his market value to a fresh 
test. Then he leapt to a resolution. The match 
struck upon the sole of his boot. Mr. Isaacson 
had decided that it must be now. 

Mr. Isaacson’s house was in the main street 
of the town, and the garden extended as far 
as the river. The house was a square building 
with two colonial pillars on either side of the 
front door. It had sheltered the ambitious head 
of Mr. Isaacson for ten years, but Mr. Isaac- 
son’s hfe was on the point of undergoing a 


12 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


complete change. He had not yet arrived, but 
he was in the process of arriving. 

Passers-by down the main street on summer 
evenings were accustomed to see, through the 
garden gate, Mr. Isaacson seated before his 
front door reviewing in memory the chief 
events of the day. The door was too far from 
the main street for a stranger to form a clear 
idea of him, but who did not know his short 
round body, his bald head, his pale face that 
grew in pallor daily, his face that bore the im- 
print of perpetual fatigue, so intensely did he 
throw himself into every idea, every circum- 
stance, every point of view on his way through 
life. In the midst of this pallor shone his small 
blue eyes (that the passing of time was dim- 
ming) a little troubled perpetually, not so much 
from unquenchable fire as from the fact that 
they were constantly moving. 

The door behind Mr. Isaacson opened. Mrs. 
Isaacson appeared with an air of comfortable 
solicitude. Mr. Isaacson did not look behind 
him to see who it was ; he knew. 

“Well, Mother?” said Mr. Isaacson. 

Mr. Isaacson had neither sons nor daughters, 
but he had a way of calling Mrs. Isaacson 
Mother, that defied any listener to imagine that 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


13 


he might have wanted anything he did not have. 
The intonation imphed that Mr. Isaacson had 
a luxuriant family, which he had done away 
with as a matter of convenience. When he 
called his wife Mother, he made his relationship 
to Mrs. Isaacson quite clear, and he stopped 
argument. 

He was aware of Mrs. Isaacson. She stood 
behind him making no reply to his greeting. 
Abruptly he waved his pipe above his head in 
the direction of a placard labelled, “To Let.” 

“It’s the last night in the old house,” he said. 
“We’ve got to ver-moose. Mother. We’ve got 
to ver-moose.” 

“There are endless reasons, no doubt,” re- 
plied Mrs. Isaacson resignedly. “I shall just 
have to go along.” 

“For better, for worse,” retaliated Mr. 
Isaacson. 

“But I hate to leave my asparagus bed.” 

“For richer, for poorer,” elaborated Mr. 
Isaacson. 

“And my strawberries. The plants are so 
hardy.” 

“It is now or never,” repeated Mr. Isaacson. 

“Now or never.” 

A fly settled on Mr. Isaacson’s bald head, 


14 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


and with a quiet waving of her hand Mrs. Isaac- 
son disturbed it and drove it away. 

“It is difficult to express things,” she said 
slowly. “I am a plain woman. I have been 
happy here. There are many good things in 
life, though, and I may be just as happy where 
I am going. Still I shall miss my asparagus 
bed and my strawberries.” 

“There is something wonderful about ad- 
venture,” observed Mr. Isaacson. 

Mrs. Isaacson disregarded that. She was 
looking at the sign, “To Let” on the colonial 
pillar. “Jacob,” she said, “If we are not com- 
ing back, why don’t you sell the place? Why 
rent it?” 

Mr. Isaacson replied with a peculiar reso- 
nance. Something in his voice and manner 
made his wife look at him. 

“Jacob Isaacson never goes back on any- 
thing that has served him,” he said. “Let an 
animal, a human being, even a house once be 
of service to Jacob Isaacson, and he will never 
part with it.” 

Mrs. Isaacson rested her hands on her hus- 
band’s shoulder. 

“You are sorry, too. Why do we go?” 

Mr. Isaaacson knocked his pipe against the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


15 


colonial pillar. “Something drives me, Anna. 
Something tells me that it is now or never. Life 
makes its claims. To the Jew it is a restless 
futility. There is no tranquillity for us until 
we have reconquered our independence and are 
again at home in Palestine. As a race, we 
have had a long journey. We have never been 
at home, but it may be that our sons” — Mr. 
Isaacson corrected himself — “it may be, that 
the next generation wiU return to the Holy 
Land. Emancipation, emancipation from the 
yoke of nations. The Jewish people will be 
themselves at last.” 

Mrs. Isaacson sighed. 

“For centm’ies they have lived among 
strangers,” he continued. “The Jewish people 
were destined to go through discipline. Their 
destiny is accomplished.” 

“Yes, Jacob,” Mrs. Isaacson spoke sooth- 
ingly, “you love this thought. We will go. I 
am content. Quite content to leave my aspara- 
gus bed and my strawberries.” Mrs. Isaacson 
sighed again softly. “But,” her words came 
jerkily, as though forcing themselves through 
her generally placid brain, “I cannot help but 
ask you, Jacob, how all this trade will take the 
Jewish people back to their own land?” 


16 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“Because,” Mr. Isaacson declared with sud- 
den force, “our position of dependence has been 
too insufferable, too unbearable. Dependent! 
We the most hard-working, discipbned, thrifty 
people on earth. Yet we are hardly tolerated 
in society. We foresaw we must have power. 
Money is power. The Jew trades. He buys. 
He sells for more. He buys again. He grows 
rich. The Christian borrows, the Jew lends. 
He gains control. He has long sight, the Jew. 
He sees that the one who has the power in the 
future is he who owns the raw materials of the 
world. The Jew dives his hands, his long 
fingers into the very bowels of the earth. He 
will command. And then he will go where he 
pleases back to his own land. Trade,” con- 
tinued Mr. Isaacson, “trade is like the circula- 
tion of the air; without it the heart of the world 
would stop.” 

Mr. Isaacson mopped his brow. 

“Don’t get excited, Jacob,” said Mrs. Isaac- 
son, “don’t get excited.” 

****** 

Yet again. At the same hour that Vacla 
leaned upon his window, that Mr. Isaacson sat 
before his house, at the hour when twilight was 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


17 


being absorbed by the dark shadows of night, 
from a village in the Laurentian hills, a yovmg 
girl walked down to the cliff to see the moon 
rise across the St. Lawrence River. The day 
had been grey and damp. Low-lying clouds, 
that formed a bank on the southern horizon, 
were being gently dispersed by the evening 
wind. The river was calm, but on the cliff the 
leaves of the birches made from time to time a 
little rustling sound. The wide St. Lawrence, 
the fringe of pine trees, the hush of approach- 
ing night made a rare effect of beauty, and with 
it was mingled that air which is partly of the 
Laurentian Hills and partly a whiff blown 
through the gulf from the Atlantic Ocean. The 
young girl gazed and gazed. Those wonderful 
clear evenings of early summer are like the radi- 
ant moments of first love, and like first love 
in their indefinable quality, they do not occur 
again. 

She was a tall slim girl, with an olive skin 
and dark thick hair. Her figure had not yet lost 
the slightness that belongs to childhood. It was 
languid, as though she had grown too quickly, 
but lithe, betraying a nervous temperament. 
And her eyes, her dark brown eyes were more 
unfathomable than the river which flowed be- 


18 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


neath. They were passionate and impulsive 
with something dangerous in their expression 
for herself. She had just completed her nine- 
teenth year. 

There was a breath of wind. It had caught 
the seaweed laid bare by the low tide and was 
redolent of the ocean. It was a whiff of some- 
thing strong and vital and unknown. Some- 
thing stirred in her memory, something her 
brain did not reflect, but which lay in the ether 
of her soul. A vapour of the past. Some phe- 
nomenon of an anterior life, hastening to her, 
stretching out invisible hands to warn her, to 
recall some form of life to her yoxmg memoiy. 
Nineteen years on earth, but where before? 
Memory is limited by the years; but emotion? 
Over what dark waters may it not have come? 
May it not hve through the experience we call 
death and persist? What is it that hastens to 
us at certain moments of our lives? Something 
which seems familiar, but which we do not 
recognize. This strange something penetrated 
the mood of the girl standing on the chff as, 
with parted lips and outstretched hands, she 
murmured the question that is so often flung 
out by the young: 

“Life, life. What do you hold for me?” 


CHAPTER III 


On the morning of the twentieth of June, 
Mr. Isaacson sat in his new office prepared to 
set in motion the ideas that were to carry his 
projects further into life. The morning was 
fine. The sunbeams streamed through the half- 
open window. The air that came to touch his 
face was neither hot nor cold. From the street 
below the ascending noise of the traffic together 
with the honk-honk of the motor cars came up 
crisply as if the life of the city was in very good 
tune. Indeed there seemed to be no false note, 
nothing to destroy the general atmosphere of 
well being. Life beat in upon him very hope- 
fully. 

The office boy entered with a card. He 
glanced at it. 

“Show him in,” he said briskly. “Show him 
in.” 

As the little office boy went out, Mr. Isaacson 
passed his hand over his face preparatory to 
adopting his sententious manner. Even with 
19 


20 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


the office boy he was sometimes sententious. He 
glanced at the clock. Eleven to the minute. 
That was good. He liked punctuality. Neither 
too early, nor too late. That was punctuality. 

In the doorway stood a young man with 
broad shoulders, a head of curly hair, very in- 
telligent, piercing eyes under strongly-marked 
eyebrows; a thick, well-cut mouth; altogether 
a personality not of a common type, that made 
a forceful impression. 

He made a cimious impression on Mr. Isaac- 
son ; he awakened in him respect for his power 
and a kind of involuntary liking. Mr. Isaacson 
made a tentative movement to rise in his chair, 
then he remembered that he was now a capi- 
talist employing labour. Instead of rising, he 
swung his legs free of the desk and sat side- 
ways on his revolving chair. 

“Glad to see you,” he said. It was difficult 
for him to deaden his natural effusiveness. 

As his visitor came forward, he motioned to 
a chair facing the window. “Fine weather 
we’re having,” he said cheerfully. “Remark- 
ably beautiful morning.” 

Thus far Vacla had not spoken. Feeling it 
was time that a ball came back over the net, 
Mr. Isaacson rested his elbows on his chair. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


21 


placed the tips of his fingers together, and 
waited. Vacla squared himself for the inter- 
view. 

“I have been told,” he began, “that we might 
be mutually useful to each other.” Mr. Isaac- 
son’s eyebrows shot up. 

This was always Vacla’s method of attack, 
first to sting his listener to a sense that he in- 
fringed upon his dignity, then with the suave 
persuasion of an Irish priest to smooth down 
the ruffled feathers, beguile his listener into a 
pleasant mood, and so give evidence at once 
of his, Vacla’s powers. 

“I have been led to believe,” Vacla repeated, 
“that I could help you — and you could help 
me.” 

Mr. Isaacson with his eyebrows up, sat stiffly 
in his chair. 

“But unquestionably it is absurd that a man 
with yoin* vision, your enterprise, your special 
genius for the expansion of trade, should need 
anyone, not to mention anyone so compara- 
tively untried as I am.” 

Mr. Isaacson’s eyebrows came down. This 
was the proper focus. 

“Still even great men can do nothing with- 
out the proper tools, and I have come to see 


22 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


whether we might not work together for our 
mutual benefit.” Up went the eyebrow. Vacla 
had now sighted this sign as a signal of dissat- 
isfaction to be watched. “And whether,” he 
continued, “with your psychological vision you 
might not guide me into the doing of some 
efficient work. I am young. I am strong. I 
am intelligent. I am willing. That is what I 
bring to the market.” 

Mr. Isaacson relaxed in his chair. He began 
to like this new tool. 

“The function of the stock market,” said Mr. 
Isaacson adopting his sententious manner, “is 
not to reflect past or present conditions, but to 
discount the future. Have you foresight?” 

“No, but they say that you have.” 

“What is your business qualification?” asked 
Mr. Isaacson sharply. 

“I can make others believe in what I be- 
lieve. The object may be worthless, but if I 
believe in it, I can carry my hearers into a 
similar belief. I can make them see it as I 
see.” 

“The object isn’t worthless,” observed Mr. 
Isaacson. 

“I know. I was merely saying that my asset 
is my belief in my own powers.” 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 23 

Mr. Isaacson passed his hand over his face 
preparatory to impressive speech. 

“Business lags,” he said, “and optimism re- 
fuses to assert itself. We are making immis- 
takable progress toward readjustment, but 
there is no assurance that the future does not 
hold stiU other troublesome problems and im- 
pleasant surprises. European countries are re- 
entering all markets. Undoubtedly from now 
on reports will confirm my opinion, that cheap 
labour in the older coxmtries combined with 
economical executives will be efiicacious in in- 
juring American trade.” 

“You are an American, you work for 
America?” asked Vacla. 

“I am an Israelite. I work for Jacob Isaac- 
son. I do not pick, nor choose. Three-score 
years and ten, a Jewish life — there is no time. 
Where I find myself, there I labour. At pres- 
ent I am an American in America. After 
reviewing conditions in more than one country 
I stay in America — for the present. And it is 
here that I hope to carry out my impressive 
catalogue.” 

Vacla bowed his head to intimate that he was 
listening. He wondered why Mr. Isaacson 
used the word, catalogue. To Mr. Isaacson it 


24 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


conveyed the impression of something vague 
yet capable of being amplified, filled in, as it 
were, as his brain elaborated. 

“Only a few months ago, we were practically 
under the shadow of impending panic. All 
danger of this has disappeared. But a period 
of low earnings is psychologically depressing, 
and the market is not prone to optimism. 
Buyers are not confident. They will not come 
forward with their money.” 

Vacla saw Mr. Isaacson’s chin drawn in, and 
his forehead put forward. He was preparing 
to project his individuahty upon his listener. 
It was a promising sign. There was something 
tremendously mental about Jacob Isaacson at 
that moment. 

“If you join me,” he said, “it would be your 
business to make buyers come forward with 
much money. It would be your business to 
raise thirteen miUions.” 

“It is a great smn,” objected Vacla. 

“It is a clear possibihty,” Mr. Isaacson as- 
serted, almost with violence. 

“I have power,” Vacla afiirmed, “but have I 
enough to exercise it to this extent?” 

“Well?” Mr. Isaacson said at last, as Vacla 
did not speak. “There are no mediums. There 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


25 


is black. There is white. There is yes. There 
is no. You take it, or you don’t take it. Which? 
To the strong swimmer nothing is out of reach. 
You take it, or you don’t take it, which?” 

With a quick gesture Vacla lifted his head. 
“I take it,” he said. 

“Good,” said Mr. Isaacson, “good. I will 
think out details and you will come to me to- 
morrow at eleven. Not earlier, not later, but 
eleven. I will then give you yoim first instruc- 
tions.” 

“We must construct,” said Mr. Isaacson as 
if half to himself. “The world’s idols are break- 
ing down, we must construct.” His voice had 
the tone of anxiety, genuine anxiety. 

“Thank you very much,” said Vacla getting 
up and making a bow. “I shall be here to- 
morrow at eleven.” 

Mr. Isaacson turned his sharp little eyes on 
his visitor. An idea had presented itself. 

“Wait a minute. You understand? There 
must be no wild berries. You must keep your 
belief in yourself.” 

“Yes,” said Vacla. “I will be here tomorrow 
at eleven,” he repeated as he left the room. 

Vacla in speaking to himself about the culti- 
vation of his garden had always been wont to 


26 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


say, “There must be no weeds in my garden.” 
He had not mentioned berries. 

The Jew is the enigma of the world and 
sometimes the Jew is an enigma to himself. In 
the case of Mr. Isaacson, there was his real self 
and his superficial self. His associates had long 
reahzed the superficial, the real Mr. Isaacson 
was only suspected by himself. No one pre- 
tends to deny that many a man goes down to 
his grave with valuable and carefully guarded 
qualities undeveloped and imknown. On the 
other hand, the man himself may guess them 
and he may be too lazy, too hampered by con- 
ventionality and self -ease to generate the intel- 
lectual power necessary for their growth. 

Neither laziness, self-ease, nor convention- 
ality hampered Mr. Isaacson. 

When Vacla Melfort left him that morning 
the lines of his plan were only beginning to form 
in Mr. Isaacson’s mind. He was not sure of 
the exact pattern. He meant to adapt himself 
in time to circumstances. Now the Jewish law 
allows the Jew to do business with a Gentile 
on a different basis from that on which he does 
business with a brother Jew. Had the Jew 
remained in Palestine, he would never have be- 
come the financial power that he is, because the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


27 


old law of Moses forbade the taking of interest; 
and interest, almost a speculative interest, has 
been the basis of his finance. Moreover, the Jew 
could not make money out of another Jew’s 
distress, because the land which was appor- 
tioned among the people might be lost by debt, 
or sold in cases of need, but every fifty years 
in the “year of jubilee” it was returned to its 
original family ownership. The Jews have not 
got rich out of one another, but out of the peo- 
ple among whom they have lived, and it is the 
“Law of the Stranger,” the law which says, 
“unto a stranger thou mayst lend upon v^ury; 
but unto thy brother thou shall not lend upon 
usmy,” which has allowed them to obey their 
principles and yet become master financiers 
among the people with whom they have so- 
journed. 

In a marked degree the Jew possesses a 
commercial genius. First and foremost he is 
a trader. The Gentiles stiU claim, and some 
modern spiritual leaders of Judaism claim, that 
Israel’s mission to the nations is spiritual; but 
observation does not convince that the Israel 
of today is fulfilling that assertion. It is as a 
trader that his instincts have driven him round 
the earth. His migrations have been accom- 


28 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


panied by unpopularity of marked evidence 
which he has tended to increase himself as he 
has not cared to cultivate the friendship of the 
Gentile masses, believing that he belongs to a 
superior race. Now the Jew undoubtedly has 
a very high average of intellectual ability. 
Combined with this, he is shrewd, inventive and 
resourceful, never showing his hand until the 
game is played. And the game which he has 
played in every country throughout the world 
is as yet hardly beginning to be known. Like 
Disraeli, his illustrious brother, the smaller Jew 
is a conspirator. 

With a feehng of annoyance that he was be- 
ing interrupted again, Jacob Isaacson looked 
up at the sound from the doorway intimating 
that some one was entering, but as the visitor 
appeared and the eyes of the two men met, their 
faces lighted up. 

“Vinevar.” 

“Isaacson.” 

It was indeed Vinevar, the man whose in- 
fluence and power were well known. If any 
one had described Isaacson as a Jewish Ameri- 
can, he would have described Vinevar as an 
American Jew. And yet Vinevar was seldom 
seen publicly in association with his own peo- 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


29 


pie. He seemed to prefer the Gentile popula- 
tion, his only intimate Jewish friend being Ben 
Hesse, the official Jewish lobbyist at Washing- 
ton. So it was with an exclamation of surprise 
that Isaacson greeted him. 

The two men shook hands. Vinevar placed 
his long black ebony cane with the gold knob 
on the table. Upon it he laid his hat and gloves, 
then with the deliberation of one who knows 
that everything must await the accomplishment 
of his most trifling action, he sat down. 

Vinevar rubbed his long fingers together. 
“The pass-word, Isaacson,” he said, “the pass- 
word.” 

“All Judaan,” replied Isaacson, “All Ju- 
daan.” 

Vinevar smiled. “ T will curse them, that 
curse thee,’ ” he said. “However, to the busi- 
ness in hand. Has the young Gentile come?” 

“Yes, he left only a moment ago. He has 
brains and an engaging personality. I was 
favourably impressed.” 

“Experienced?” 

“No, but not afraid of work and ambitious. 
He will learn.” 

“Would you say that any element in his 
nature has the upper hand over his mind?” 


30 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Isaacson considered a momem: before an- 
swering. “I think not,” he replied finally. 

Vinevar frowned. “Sometimes a weak point 
in a man’s nature — a weak point understood 
and counted upon — gives one a hold over him. 
It is only the Jew who must sacrifice all his 
personal desires for the benefit of his people. 
However, we shall see. You have engaged 
him?” 

“Practically. Salary and details are not 
fixed, but he comes for instructions tomorrow.” 

“Our next step,” said Vinevar, “is to con- 
trol the cotton lands of the United States. The 
first step was to depreciate the market value of 
these lands as much as possible. The banks 
have limited the farmer’s efforts. They (the 
farmers) have been given to understand’ that 
if they planted more acreage to cotton than 
they were instructed to, they would not be 
financed. Cotton production has gone down. 
Cotton prices have gone up. Yet the profits 
do not go to the farmers, but to those who con- 
trol the course of cotton from the first market 
to the wearer.” 

Isaacson nodded his head. 

“Profitable at every point, is the Jewish 
plan,” resumed Vinevar. “The pubhc must 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


31 


supply us the money to buy the cotton lands. 
Our middle men are making a profit in cotton, 
but it is not enough. We must raise the rest 
in bonds. This — the yoimg man, what is his 
name?” 

“Melfort,” replied Isaacson. 

“Melfort,” repeated Vinevar. “Melfort 
must raise thirteen millions. We wiU keep 
cotton prices up, but Melfort must raise the 
rest.” 

Isaacson knew that when Vinevar began to 
talk about his projects, no suggestions were 
expected from him, so he merely listened and 
agreed with him. 

“The best means to attain this,” continued 
Vinevar, “are bonds. Secured bonds, secured 
by the cotton lands. The public will lend. We 
will pay them interest. When we are ready, 
we will pay back the bonds and keep the cotton 
lands. 

r" “Salaries,” continued Vinevar, “are deter- 
fmined not by the law of supply and demand, 
*but by favoritism. While we need him, you 
will give the young man a handsome salary.” 

Isaacson nodded. He smiled. At bottom 
Isaacson was kindly, he was glad to do it. 

“The rest, the details, the passing elements, 


32 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


I leave in your hands. From time to time I 
will communieate with you. I have many 
projects. Much is at stake. Many- threads 
are ready for the cloak without seam.” 

Vinevar rose, took his hat, his gloves, his 
ebony cane and held out his hand. 

“Good bye,” he said. 

“All J udaan,” repeated Mr. Isaacson. “All 
Judaan.” 

Unquestionably to be visited by Vinevar was 
a surprising compliment. 


CHAPTER IV 


On the day of his interview with Isaacson, 
Vacla had come to New York by the morning 
train, and had gone straight to one of the 
smaller hotels near the Grand Central Station. 
He washed, changed his clothes, breakfasted 
and walked leisurely down the avenue, looking 
in the shop windows, taking his time, that he 
might not find himself at Isaacson’s office be- 
fore eleven o’clock. 

When the interview was over and he again 
found himself with time on his hands, he de- 
cided to take the stage to the Metropolitan 
Museum and look at some of the pictures. It 
was a joyous day. New York from her white 
pavements to her blue sky sparkled in a glow- 
ing exultation. She threw a certain excite- 
ment to the people in her streets, and the im- 
pression she made was the impression of bril- 
liancy, of noise, of enterprise and enthusiasm, 
but unlike the cities of the Old World, she hid 
no mystery. All that she is, is known. 

33 


34 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“The gateway to America,” said Yacla to 
himself. “The gateway to America.” He had 
mentally so frequently thought of an opening 
for his own career, that on the first day of his 
new life in the United States, he confused the 
two thoughts. New York the gateway of 
America and New York the gateway of Vacla 
Melfort’s career. He repeated the slogan — 
“Twenty-five years of age, everything to gain 
and nothing to lose.” Leaning back in the 
front top seat of the bus, gazing at the con- 
glomeration of movement that Fifth Avenue 
Yacla felt sure that the city would 
something. He had the faith of the 
young. In middle age a man grows tired of 
dreams. He wants something real, something 
to take down the years. Not so, Vacla at 
twenty-five. Nothing to lose and everything 
to gain, that was the cue. 

Did these people walking up Fifth Avenue, 
down Fifth Avenue, not know that youth wants 
things — ^houses, motor cars, fur coats, jewels? 
Youth wants things. In youth the sky is so 
high, the sun is so bright, the world so wide, 
youth wants things. When one is old the grass 
is not so green. 

New York was a hurly-burly into which had 


k presents, 
yield him 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


35 


come Vacla Melfort, young, strong, ambitious, 
poor. The bus paused in front of one of the 
luxurious clubs. Through its large, plate-glass 
windows Vacla saw two or three men reading 
the morning papers. Twelve o’clock and noth- 
ing to do, except read the sporting page and 
get up an appetite for lunch; an easy task. 
Next to the bus awaiting the traffic regulations 
was a large car, with two young, pretty women. 
One was leaning forward talking and laugh- 
ing with the chauffeur. A democratic country ; 
the master friendly with the man. The bus 
moved on. Yes, there was something alive in 
New York. An intense vitality incapable of 
capture, but there, there always for the young 
— ^Whew-ew-ew-ew ! A steel girder being 
taken to the top of a high building on a side 
street. Noise and enterprise and endless life. 
Nothing old, nothing dying. What did they 
do with their old? 

On the seat opposite to him he saw a woman, 
sitting stiffiy erect. His eyes followed the 
curve of her shoulder. He saw a bronze curl. 
His eyes travelled to her chin; her neck was 
wrinkled, tired. Nothing old. No greying 
hair. They dyed it. Again the bus stopped 
at a cross street. This time his eyes wandered 


36 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


to a face waiting in a victoria outside a shop. 
He gave a little start. It reminded him of his 
mother, his strange mother with her eyes glow- 
ing in her face like coals, coals that ashes could 
not cover; his Russian mother with her bursts 
of passionate tenderness to him. A memory 
flung itself upon him, a memory of himself 
asleep; damp with sleep in his little bed at 
home; and then hands groping for him. A 
pulling away of the clothes, a dragging of him 
onto his mother’s knee, as his head sank hke a 
heavy flower upon her shoulder. The woman 
in the victoria was a ghost, a reflection, paler. 
The woman in the victoria would not be sub- 
ject to those outbursts, those moods. She had 
not those loving hands that pulled him and 
pushed him away. He lifted his hat to the 
memory of his mother. Bless her, she was 
dead! Funny how a man loves his mother. 
If she had hved — Ah! well, she hadn’t, and the 
world held motor cars and noise. 

His father, the tail ponderous Englishman, 
neat, clean-shaven with his smooth fair hair, his 
father with his reticent, his mild interrogatory 
attitude towards his tempestuous wife, — his 
father was gone too. Middle-class people in a 
middle-class home, like many others ; backbone ; 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


37 


vertebrje; something needed to hold the soeial 
system together. No use helittling his father. 
He hore his name, Melfort, the Anglo-Saxon 
stamp. His Dad gone, left regret, gentle re- 
gret, hut his Mother gone left a pain ; a hig aehe 
to fill with motor cars and things. He saw his 
mother at the piano, playing the pieces he 
loved, taking his father and himself and raising 
them, flinging them up with the sounds from 
her fingers above their commonplace home. 
Her music — patternless pieces of a dream, that 
was shattered. His mother, but a memory. 
No one now to detach his soul from his body 
with her music. No one now to pull him from 
his bed and wrap him in a blanket to come and 
see the moon — those were memories of long 
ago. Here was New York. “The gateway of 
America.” A ghost in a victoria, and noise 
and bustle and enterprise; a bubbling stream 
from which to fill his cup; no more music; no 
more reminiscent memories; just blue sky and 
ino^ant enterprise, and yet there is a proverb 
that says: 

t^‘All that lies huried is not dead.” 


CHAPTER V 


Perhaps the most necessary thing to a man 
is something to reinforce his pride. Even beauty 
and happiness are occasionally not enough. He 
wants as it were something that is substantial 
and very decent. Beauty and happiness crowd 
each other, but the substantial and very decent 
rouse him to a continued sense of his own 
stability. Beauty leaves a duU pain in the 
soul. Seeking for beauty is like seeking for 
something that does not exist. )Life takes all 
and returns nothing. Happiness too casts up 
her account. Quite wilfully she brings a high- 
water mark of enterprising peace, and when a 
man goes across to the mediocrity of the com- 
monplace, there is no perfume to strike upon 
his nostrils and make him sad. The substantial 
and very decent come and come again with 
exactly the same strength and warmth of feef- 
ing. 

AVhen he arranged to make New York his 
headquarters, Vacla took a small apartment on 
Fifty-Sixth Street near Park Avenue. Of his 
38 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


39 


first hours in his own home his after remem- 
brance was somewhat indistinct, but he could 
never see a man fumble in his pocket for a 
latch key and put it in a lock, without recalling 
the mahogany door in the stucco wall of the 
fourth floor on Fifty-Sixth Street. Decent 
and substantial and expensive, and as Vacla 
put the key back in his vest pocket, he had a 
childish pride in knowing himself the tenant. 
The world was rich in its limits and this was 
his own. 

He had been in New York barely three 
months. In the daytime working; getting 
himself between his new shafts; raising the 
wind for his loan; learning of the wisdom of 
Isaacson, with here and there a taking of an 
hour off at limch-time to pick up some bjjbelot 
and have it sent home. “Don’t take off the 
wrapping,” he told the man. He himself 
wished to cut the string and hear the rustle of 
the paper as he tore it from a fine bit of Chip- 
pendale. He knew the tones of the streets 
now; the reddish brown of the roofs; the half- 
hidden fire escape; the half -revealed phantas- 
magoria. New York swelling without on a 
prosperous sea. Within, beneath his own red- 
dish brown roof, a good cook, a good man- 


40 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


servant, comfort, a few nice pieces. He sat in 
his leather chair and smoked his pipe; a curly- 
headed young man proud of his natural pos- 
sessions. 

Dreams drifted in from the phantasmagoria, 
disembodied spirits ; grey transparent spirits in 
a dreamless summer night. Vacla looked at 
the Chippendale chair. According to the book, 
it was genuine, rare. 'Why then this distant 
rumble of a discontent ? An uncatalogued emo- 
tion, taking an uninvited stroll through his 
breast. A bad tendency, this encouragement 
to a discontent, he said it to himself with im- 
patience. He had everything to be pleased 
about. Isaacson admitted he was working 
beyond form. The spectacle of life was good. 
The forming agency of the economic approved 
the drama of existence. Whence then these 
dreams from the phantasmagoria; this lassitude 
as of a dream dropped down? Life leaned out 
and a spirit came under the reddish-brown 
roof, through the half-opened window, a form- 
less tissue that took a form. Vacla saw a girl 
spirit standing near him, slight, swaying in 
a cobweb dress; young, half-grown, with a 
little, oval, spirit face; an unsparing spirit with 
a tilted chin. Vaca got up from his chair and 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


41 


moved to it. The beams of light dissolved, 
there was nothing there. 

“God!” he said out loud. “I must be going 
batty with the heat.” But somehow the spirit 
form in its cobweb dress had catalogued his 
emotion. “I am like all men,” he said to him- 
self. “Man and woman created he them to 
fill the emptiness of spirit.” 

At present he had sympathies, prejudices, 
ideas, without responsibility. A bird with a 
free wing, with no string in his heart to puU 
him back from a dangerous flight. Debonair, 
with a ready word, men and women liked him 
as he moved among them. 

With young gaiety he sorted the recurrent 
details of his office. With gaiety he put on his 
hat and entered Wall Street to raise thirteen 
millions. He liked New York, with its sub- 
way, its surface cars, its elevated trains filled 
with men and women. Bright, gay, careless 
New York — was it just as careless as it seemed^ 
Vacla often wonderfed. The influence over 
him was so marked, that he caught its manners 
and habits. It was the communication of the 
exhilaration, he felt, that helped him in the 
raising of his loan. 

Isaacson often envied this unexpended 


42 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


youth, surging up anew each morning. This 
hope, this instinct to “having.” It was, so 
young. All the while those first days Isaac- 
son watched him to see if any weak trait might 
manifest itself, any sign of an unrehable laps- 
ing, but Vacla drank little, smoked moderately, 
and spent his Sundays swinging along a coun- 
try road, or touring in his new car. A good 
boy, Isaacson thought — ^he called him a boy — 
but with something impenetrable, something 
lacking in his quite gifted nature. Isaacson, 
the vine without branches, took a great in- 
terest in his new tool. He added Vacla to his 
chosen group of personages. It was not a 
waste — Isaacson’s empty heart. As sometimes 
happens with men who have no families, his 
wife, Anna, the simple, foimd her shrine there, 
a large shrine, always ready for her large form, 
but others too had their niche, ordinary people 
who had once served him, and as an irony 
on his non-parentage, a stripling or two who 
were wont to make Isaacson’s tired grey face 
kindle. In a superficial way, Vacla was one 
of his striplings; a new fly in the priceless 
amber of Isaacson’s humanity, that he watched 
as one watches the tricks of individuality in a 
young dog, in an effort to solve the secrets they 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


43 


express. Isaacson was a man who walked 
alone at the end of the day. It seemed to him, 
that Vacla walked alone under a stormy sky. 
"What perplexed him was that the dog had not 
the tricks of its own individuality. Vacla had 
none of the traits of solitude. For once Isaac- 
son, who delighted in his own rapidity of in- 
tuition, had a tool that baffled him. From deep 
experience and power of observation Isaacson 
gathered that something in this nature was held 
from him, held from everyone, either by artifice, 
or by temperament. However, for the mo- 
ment all went well, and with a knowledge of 
his own variety of resoiirces, should anything 
occur to induce lack of confidence, Isaacson 
trusted Vacla more and more, and more and 
more gave him a free rein. 

“Study peoples,” said Mr. Isaacson irrele- 
vantly. “Study peoples. You have to make a 
raid on capital, so study peoples.” 

“Individuals, or nations?” 

“Both. Men are what they are.” 

For will power and intelligence Isaacson’s 
match was hard to find. The spirit of unrest 
had touched him and he found no escape. 
Sometimes after spending a day in his com- 
pany, Isaacson took Vacla home to dinner 


44 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


in his new house. Everything was very new, 
everything was very much upholstered, every- 
thing looked a little as if carte blanche had 
been given to the management of the fur- 
nishing department in a departmental shop. 
The springs in the chairs had too much resist- 
ance and lacked that give and take, which form 
part of the comfort of a famihar seat with an 
old stuffing. The rugs on the floor were bright 
and unfaded. The velvet hangings had no 
darkened folds. The crispness of it all went 
oddly with Isaacson’s white tired face. 

“Well, Mr. Melfort,” Mrs. Isaacson would 
say. “I am awfully pleased to see you.” 
Whereat Mr. Isaacson was wont to beam. It 
always made him happy to bestow, even if it 
was only “a slice of his own joint.” 

Would-be leisurely evenings, they were. 
Mrs. Isaacson sitting with her hands before 
her, or with a little bit of crochetting; Isaac- 
son with his cigar; Vacla smoking intermittent 
cigarettes. But as Vacla walked home down 
the avenue to his own apartment, he had always 
a feeling that Isaacson was pushed toward a 
goal by some hidden force, that he too was being 
absorbed in a stream, a flow of energy, which 
thrust aside the poetic grace of life, the sense 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


45 


of happy play, and carried those who were 
caught in its current on in an ever-increasing 
roar. And the effect was not to make the 
world shadowj”^ and unreal, but bright hke a 
white room that was ablaze with shadeless 
lights. 

“Study peoples,” said Mr. Isaacson. “Study 
peoples — ” 


CHAPTER VI 


Students of Israel have often noticed the 
pensiveness of the Jewish face. They say that 
the Jew is early withered hy life, and this 
premature development is explained hy the 
Jew’s premature acquaintance with suffering. 
Scorned and scoffed at, the little Jew has had 
to learn at an early age to observe and be on 
his guard. 

Vinevar’s glance, so piercing, so intense, had 
a wasted look. His forehead was furrowed 
with premature wrinkles, his youth had lost its 
bloom, yet though his body seemed wasted, 
his blood impoverished, his appearance old, his 
mind was always alert. He had a secret vital- 
ity, a marvellous power, he had not yet ex- 
hausted himself, there was sap in him still. 
Vinevar’s spirit, like the spirit of his race, tem- 
pered by the persecutions of fifteen centuries, 
was unbreakable. His motto was, “In spite of 
everything.” 

Vinevar was tall; constant bending had given/ 
46 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


47 


him a stoop. As he walked into Isaacson’s 
office, one morning about three months after 
Vacla’s arrival, displaying a naive vanity that 
in a smaller personality would have been almost 
childish, a vanity that betrayed itself in the 
studied importance of personal trivialities, 
Vacla observed him, observed his pretensions; 
and being young, unversed in history, Vacla 
did not lay this longing to dazzle of the Jew at 
the door of the years that have denied him so 
long. Perhaps a long record of sorrow and 
wrong had embittered Vinevar’s parents. Their 
lives had been repellent and unpicturesque, and 
amid sm’roimdings of spiritual destitution Vin- 
evar made a starved and stunted growth. Re- 
pressed patriotism strove in him and was stifled. 
The very iron bars of the windows in the sad 
old street of Frankfort would speak if they 
could and tell of the weakly boy whose poor 
little body, thin and emaciated through the 
stress of over-much study, was the subject of 
ridicule in the school. A groschen or two was 
often earned by little jobs of copying. This 
money he saved. 

|‘T must draw my own water from the well,”^ 
he would say. At first he would be a Jew and 
then a German, yet before he was out of his 


48 THE CAPTIVE HERD 

teens he ceased to be a German and remained 
a Jew. 

“Liberty,” said Vinevar copying pages for 
a groschen or two. “Liberty,” he repeated, 
laying the groschen in a handkerchief to buy 
a ticket for America. 

Did the little German boys, who threw mud 
at him and made fun of his thin little figure, 
kill his sense of adopted patriotism? Did the 
memory of that mud perhaps fan a flame 
of tribalism, more intense than anyone could 
guess? Plants torn by the roots sometimes do 
not grow again. They say that in life there 
is really no small or great thing, that little 



become great and great things little 


when played on by the imfortvmate accidents 
of existence, and that as the years “block in” 
the outline, the values resolve themselves. A 
thing is according to the mood sometimes in 
which one looks at it. 

Vinevar joined Isaacson and Vacla with a 
certain display of pretentiousness. 

“Haven’t seen you for some time,” he said 
to Isaacson. “How are the enterprises pro- 
gressing?” 

“Very well,” Isaacson shook him by the 
hand. “Very well.” 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


49 


Vinevar turned. “And the young man?” 

“My name is Melfort, sir, Vacla Melfort.” 

“The young man, I have already mentioned,” 
explained Isaacson. 

Vinevar scanned him. To he more exact, he 
scrutinised him, faintly amused, faintly con- 
temptuous. He turned to the one low easy 
chair and sat in it. 

“How do you like N^ew York?” he asked. 

“Immensely. It consumes me,” said Vacla. 

“What is New Y^ork?” asked Vinevar slowly, 
turning his wrinkled forehead towards Vacla. 

“A place where one seeks one’s own fortune,” 
answered Vacla. “One gives youth, it returns 
money.” 

The contemptuous expression dimmed a 
little in Vinevar’s face. The ordinary coin of 
life had become to him an impossibility. The 
extraordinary alone held him. The fever that 
burned in him left him exhausted except for 
the extraordinary. Men listened to him and 
acquiesced. He would provoke this youth to 
argument. 

“The workers have not always youth, but 
they always want money, more money, much 
money. They are dissatisfied. We the em- 
ployers must make them content. The life of 


50 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


one man is nothing if the masses can be made 
content. To the few their reward is in that 
they are different, the many must be made 
content.” 

Isaacson raised his eyebrows. 

Vacla replied. “I don’t agree with you. I 
am young. I have had nothing. My own life 
is more interesting, more important to me than 
the lives of all the other people in the world. 
I work for myself. New York is gay and 
sunny and it gives me my chance.” 

“As an individual?” said Vinevar. 

“As an individual.” 

“You must meet Ben Hesse. You are an 
American. A democracy presupposes the im- 
portance of the masses.” 

“I am not an American, but I am a parallel, 
a slip of the old geranium stuck in a new soil.” 

“Canada,” said Vinevar curtly, “a province. 
She needs the activity of freedom.” 

For one instant Vacla did not reply. 

“I work for my own fortxme,” he said dog- 
gedly. “Insofar as I am successful, my activ- 
ity will be of benefit to the country I inhabit. 
That is my outlook. I work for myself.” 

“Something out of the past will trip you 
up,” said Vinevar slowly. Turning to Isaac- 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


51 


son he inquired about the nominal detail of 
some transaction as if the shght interest of the 
moment could not hold him. 

“I wrote you that,” answered Isaacson. 

Vinevar balanced his eyeglass on the end of 
its string. “My memory is not of the kind 
that remembers trifles. I am habitually inac- 
cm’ate. Morever, my conscience does not 
impel me to spend an effort in attaining it. I 
pursue information about great undertakings 
only.” 

Vacla noticed that Isaacson listened atten- 
tively, as though before him were the man of 
genius for whom alone he cared. He spoke 
as a man who had risen from the ranks, who has 
not had time to learn the tastes, manners, bear- 
ing and feelings of a gentleman. He spoke 
as a man who intended to learn only those 
things that might serve him in his appointed 
task. To his friends Vinevar was a mystery. 
To men of Isaacson’s calibre the return to 
Jerusalem is a poetic sentiment. Men of his 
type repeat the words “In the West is my body, 
but my heart is in the East.” Not so Vinevar. 
He had no pious craze for the recovery of the 
Holy Land. He was not turning his posses- 
sions into money, that he might be free to 


52 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


transport himself to his future country. No, 
Vinevar was entering into long business en- 
gagements, Vinevar was buying land. 

As he talked, his conversation was charged 
with clear and critical thought. He talked as 
though he were reluctantly involved in some 
dominant and absorbing mechanism for which 
later something vital would detach itself. 
Vacla was attracted by him and then repelled 
alternately. And when the conversation was 
over, and Vinevar rose from his chair as though 
alone in the brain behind his glowing eyes was 
the strength to lift and straighten his long thin 
form, Vacla could hardly take his eyes from 
him. 

Vinevar flicked his eye-glass on its string. 
He took up his gold-headed cane. 

“If men had any idea,” he said at last, “of 
the advantages of adversity to childhood, they 
would make childhood even more unbearable 
than it is.” 

Swinging his cane a little from side to side, 
he went towards the door. 


CHAPTER VII 


Natalie was awake. In her bed down- 
stairs, her head propped up by two pillows, 
Great Aunt Anne was asleep. She had lost 
consciousness that time was flying. On her 
walnut bed that had belonged to her mother 
before her. Great Aunt Anne had forgotten 
her troubles and had fallen asleep. Daylight 
never took her imawares. Her face was alert 
and hard, and the skin seemed tight drawn over 
the bones, but sleep drew her back into the 
long-ago and some of the softness of former 
years relaxed those taut muscles. A thin spare 
woman she was — with iron grey hair, which 
once was black — and in waking a great arro- 
gance of expression. 

Across the landing her daughter Clara was 
exhaustively going through a conscientious 
programme before retiring for the night. She 
put trees in her boots and placed them outside 
her door. A marble clock on the mantlepiece 


54 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


was not exactly in the middle. She straight- 
ened it, knowing that her eye would fall on it 
in the morning. The clock was surmounted by 
a bronze figure of a horse toiling up an incline 
with a rider upon his back. Underneath was 
written the words, “Homeward Bound.” Clara 
was very fond of that clock, it had belonged 
to her father. She felt that the horse with his 
right fore foot ever advancing, ever raised, 
was metaphorical in a manner of time. As she 
straightened it she read the inscription, “Home- 
ward Bound.” That was the proper thing in 
^fe, to have got one’s direction, to move slowly 
ind with dignity towards a recognized goal. 
In these days, there were dangers, pitfalls. So 
much the more was it the duty of those whose 
characters had been formed by fortunate cir- 
cumstances of heredity and environment to 
pursue a recognized path. Above the clock 
was a text framed in walnut, embroidered in 
worsted. It said, “Enter ye in at the strait 
gate.” If the essence of Aunt Clara’s nature 
was not genial, at least it was pure. She took 
a last look around her room to be sure she had 
forgotten nothing before she threw her window 
up. She looked down the street. October. 
There was a feeling of frost in the air, the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


55 


trees were bare, the leaves gone; no moon, but 
a lot of stars. Aunt Clara turned off the light 
and got into bed. 

In the servant’s wing, cook had gone to bed, 
but the young housemaid was late, so cook’s 
light was burning so that she might hear her 
knoeking at the side door. 

Up in her own room at the top of the house 
Natalie lay awake. This particular wakeful- 
ness was caused by an impression produced by 
a chance meeting and a look seemingly gov- 
erned by the laws of elective affinity. A mo- 
ment that held a s orce ry of its own, making of 
an ordinary moment something xmforgettable 
and fleeting. When we are yoimg and all the 
future is veiled, like a stage before the curtain 
has been rung up for the first act, the really 
interesting things are those which we hardly 
guess. Shy birds that do not fly too near to 
allow us to rob them of their mystery. 

Life had been sluggish within her that day. 
She had gone for a walk on the mountain and 
had lingered, dragging her feet among the 
rustling leaves rather than retm’n to the draw- 
ing room, where Great Aunt Anne and Aunt 
Clara would be having tea. Perhaps it was 
written. Perhaps the branches above her head 


56 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


were waving her home. Perhaps she was 
awaking out of the great sleep of childhood. 

The intense life of the smnmer was gone. 
The leaves floated down. The hill-side looked 
deserted as though its frequenters had fled 
away, and Natalie turned from it and came 
home to tea. 

She stood in the doorway and looked shyly 
in to the drawing room. Great Aunt Anne 
was talking to an elderly gentleman. Op- 
posite to her sat Aunt Clara talking to a young 
man. The tea-things were still on the table, 
but everyone had finished. Vacla glancing up 
caught sight of this young nymph, and there 
came a look in his eyes that was softer than 
usual. 

“My niece,” said Great Aunt Anne. “She 
makes her home with us. Natalie, come and 
shake hands with Mr. Melfort.” 

The tall, elderly Englishman also rose and 
held out his hand. 

“How de do?” he said. “I have brought my 
young nephew to see your aunts and you.” 

Natalie turned to the young man. He shook 
her by the hand, a handshake that seemed to 
say, “We are young and they are old.” 

Standing there in her brown, fur-trimmed 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


57 


suit with soft dark eyes, with outstretched hand 
and a little smile, she looked very appealing. 

“Won’t you sit down?” 

Vacla made a place for her near his own 
chair. 

“Where have you been?” 

“On the mountain, by myself.” 

She was pretty and lonely and quite a child. 
Aunt Clara tvuned to answer a question put 
by Vacla’s uncle, and Vacla continued: 

“Why do you go walking all alone?” 

“Because I have no one to come with me.” 

“What a very young admission. If it were 
true you would not admit it.” 

“It is true.” 

It was an opening and he took it. 

“Then come for a walk with me to-morrow.” 

She gave way to a sudden desire for adven- 
ture. She looked at Aunt Clara’s profile and 
nodded. 

“Rather.” 

“Where will we meet?” 

“At the reservoir.” 

“Time?” 

“Half -past three.” 

“Don’t forget.” 

Then Aunt Clara turned to resume the con- 


58 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


versation. They talked about Ireland, and 
the riots, and the Lord Mayor of Cork. Poli- 
ticians were satirized. Vacla’s uncle was an 
Enghshman, brother to the tall, clean-shaven 
reticent, Vacla remembered as his father, who 
carried out the illusion that a man’s character 
transpires in his dress. Vacla’s uncle was not a 
family man. His instincts were bookishness 
and caution. Despite his eyes, which seemed 
to follow a friendly instinct, he watched his 
listener quick to scent any criticism or undue 
prejudice. jHe avoided subjects which might 
prove heate(^ He scented heat in Aunt Anne 
on the subjeCT of Ireland. 

“One must make excuses,” Aunt Anne said. 
“They have been grossly misled.” 

“I put it down to the climate,” said Mr. 
Melfort in a conciliatory manner. “It breeds 
discontent. The only chance for an Irishman 
is for him to leave Ireland. In some countries 
now a man is troubled chronically with his” — 
Mr. Melfort was about to mention the “liver,” 
but he remembered himself just in time — “by 
one or other of his bodily organs. In Ireland 
the native is troubled by his soul. It won’t let 
him rest. The climate breeds confusion and 
a minor violence. He wants something, he 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


59 


himself is not quite sure what. The want, the 
discontent is pressing, insistent.” His words 
dried up. He looked at Aunt Anne. 

“Nothing in Ireland lasts long,” she said 
shrewdly. 

Natalie heard her. “I don’t feel as if any- 
thing would ever change, do you?” she asked 
Vacla. 

“You are wrong,” said Vacla shaking his 
head. “One thinks that — and then suddenly 
one finds oneself swept away. The whirligig 
of time has strange tricks.” 

“What breaks down the high walls?” she 
said at last as though thinking out loud. 

“Time,” Vacla answered. “Time changes 
everything.” 

Aunt Anne was growing discursive. Mr. 
Melfort rose. He must go away now before 
the argument became heated. “By our errors 
we learn,” Aunt Anne was saying, “England 
and Ireland alike.” 

Mr. Melfort held out his hand. “Such a 
dehghtful visit and such delicious tea,” he 
murmured. 

“We are always glad to see old friends,” 
said Aunt Clara. 

“I remember the first day you came to my 


60 THE CAPTIVE HERD 

mother’s house in Merrion Square,” said Aunt 
Anne. 

Dreamily Natalie put her hand in Vacla’s. 
“We are young, and they are old,” their 
handclasp said. “The hillside is as wild and 
the roads wind as beautifully as ever.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


The sun was shining. The sky was blue. 
White clouds chased each other across the sky. 
It was an omen; a day to be snatched greedily 
from time; a fugitive, fine day to be made the 
most of, before winter came, before the sky was 
grey, and the white clouds were thick and im- 
penetrable. The roots of the flowers were laid 
away. The earth was over them and the fallen 
leaves, and above them “despondency” lurked 
for those who hate the autxunn. There are 
hiunan beings who hate the autumn. Human 
beings who die a little each autumn of their 
lives, who each autumn rehnquish some tiny 
spark of vitality, which they never regain. 
However vital the flowering of the new leaf, 
something is gone from them which does not 
return. And each autumn they have a little 
less to give us, just as light dies a few minutes 
earlier each night in October. 

By the reservoir Vacla waited. He saw the 
city with a murky veil, and on the edge the 
grey water of the river. Below and beyond 
61 


62 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


the river again, a stretch of country and then 
the mountains, but that part of the picture was 
not worked out in detail, because although the 
sun was shining it was not a translucidly clear 
day. Only the warehouses and the factory 
chimneys and the church spires in the fore- 
ground were distinct and in detail. The haze 
■was the haze of a picture of Monet, and the 
city did not relinquish her soul. 

As he watched the color of October, Vacla 
waited to see whether Natalie would come. 
Youth and health were written in his eyes and 
manner. Thirty years hence he might be walk- 
ing swiftly, lest he should take cold. To-day 
he stood leaning by the railings watching the 
view. At last as he began to grow impatient 
he saw her coming towards him, slim, graceful, 
lithe in her brown suit trimmed with fur. As 
she put her little gloved hand into his, again 
Vacla had that feeling that they were comrades. 

For a moment he had the thought of the 
renunciation of the love of his mother — perhaps 
a sister, a wife, the things he had not known; 
the things that make a man content to let the 
struggle for power and fortune make place for 
happiness and sweetness. 

“I didn’t know you’d come,” he said. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


63 


“Why not?” asked Natalie turning to walk 
by his side. “I go for a walk every day. It’s 
an early year,” she said and added, “I mean 
the cold has come quickly.” 

Vacla declared that he liked the cool crisp- 
iness. He compared it to New York and said 
he found it more invigorating. He did his 
best to amuse her with stories of the theatres, 
of the picture galleries, and other general topics 
of interest. Finally his curiosity was aroused. 
He turned and looked at her. He asked: 

“Are you staying with your Aunts for a 
visit?” ' 

“No,” she answered. “I am there for al- 
ways.” She surprised him by the blunt way 
she said it. It was a blending of a sigh with 
dogged endurance. 

Vacla glanced at her. “Your Mother and 
Father?” he asked. 

“Are dead,” she answered. “I am there for 
keeps.” 

“You think that,” he agreed. “My uncle 
who came with me yesterday is my godfather. 
I lived with him. I thought I would never get 
away, but I did. So will you when the time 
comes.” 

Natalie shook her head. 


64 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“No, it is not so easy. I am a girl.” 

She raised her eyes as he half turned. They 
had a peculiar glow. “You know, then, that 
feeling that one is caught in a net?” 

“Yes,” he answered with a short laugh. He 
told her he was a fighter, a man who liked 
difficulties to overcome. 

“^I don’t want things to be too easy. See my 
square chin?” 

“There is a dimple in it,” she said. They 
both laughed. He swung along beside her con- 
tentedly, and as he walked, he talked, egotistic- 
ally as the male is egotistical. 

“I am a fighter. I fight not for anything 
very big and great, but for myself. I mean 
to have the greatest modem power, gold. I 
am learning how to cover a debit with a debit, 
to cover an interest on a loan with another 
loan. These are modern methods of financial 
enterprise, and when I understand them I shall 
use them to protect myself.” 

So his talk went on at random, of interest 
to himself, meaningless to her except that he 
was excited, lit up by the general consciousness 
of himself and his own enterprises. His en- 
thusiasm rather than his meaning made itself 
clear. As he talked he seemed to gather her 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


65 


into his will. Without knowing it, Natalie 
was feeling that here was a chance, that in this 
power she might escape. They were the young 
drawing apart from the old, to create the life 
of their own generation. He had a wonderful 
voice that could ring its vibration through her 
soul and move her to enthusiasm. Vacla was 
aware of no limits to himself. She was aware 
of hers, painfully aware of very high walls, 
gateless and unscalable. She had the fatalism 
of the young. The sun was nearly down. 
They must turn. On the way home she gath- 
ered some leaves. Vacla was masterful. He 
stopped her, saying she had enough. She 
drank in his companionship as a starved plant 
draws up water, and all through the walk the 
conviction grew with both of them that they 
were comrades. They made an appointment to 
meet the next day. Just as they were separat- 
ing, Natalie asked him: 

“When you have got all these things, will 
you be happy?” 

“Of course I’ll be happy,” he said. 

But when he had left her, he was almost in 
need of being reassimed. 

“It’s deuced funny,” he thought, “that 
child!” 


CHAPTER IX 


When Vacla returned to his uncle’s flat, he 
found Mr. Nathaniel Melfort carefully remov- 
ing his goloshes and hanging his coat on a kind 
of combination mirror and hat rack in the hall. 
To explain his early return from the office, his 
uncle said: 

“The old Doctor is coming.” 

He straightened his back as if with difficulty, 
and turned to Vacla. How good to look at, 
the chap was — healthy, strong! Poor Wynd- 
ham’s boy. He was better looking than his 
father had ever been. Headstrong a bit; a 
great aversion to a tight rein; restive, but so 
far no sign of kicking over the traces. Stand- 
ing there beside him, Mr. Nathaniel Melfort 
looked grey, the muscles around his mouth 
drawn in, as though forces were preparing to 
make a necessary resistance. 

“You’re not iU, Uncle Nathan?” said Vacla 
suddenly. 

“No, no. He is just coming to smoke a pipe 
vidth me.” 

A sound was heard in the passage and then 
<56 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 6? 

the ringing of an electric bell. As Vacla 
opened the door, around it came a tall spare 
form and a face that was full of the wisdom 
of experience. This was Dr. Maurice Ebbing, 
known by his poor patients and his rich pa- 
tients alike by the gentle nickname of “the old 
Doctor.” 

It had always been Nathan Melfort’s destiny 
to watch life from a corner ; and when he wished 
for some contact with the general interests of 
life, he was wont to ask his old friend Maurice 
Ebbing in to smoke a pipe. 

Vacla followed them into the library. The 
Doctor picked up a book that lay open face 
downward. 

“StiU reading Maeterlinck, Nathan? You 
old mystic, you like him, because he has given 
a picture of life as a dream.” 

“I like him for his ideas about the dead. As. 
life goes on, we grow curious about those we 
may see again. You must notice that in your 
profession.” 

The Doctor took out his tobacco pouch. 
“Thank you, no,” he said to Vacla, “I have 
my own brand.” Vacla struck a match and 
held it up to him. The Doctor took one or two 
good puffs, and settled himself in his chair. 


68 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“You are wrong,” he said. “It is the young 
who are most interested in death. Life is so 
complex to them. They imagine that death 
will simphfy it. To an old man standing at the 
end of life, time has prepared the nerves, the 
muscles, the general organism for the departure 
of the soul. To the old, death is segregation. 
To the young, death is a cleavage.” He paused 
a second and added, “Christ died in the prime 
of manhood, when the struggle is greatest.” 

“You are an old-fashioned Christian. You’ve 
never taken up any of the new ideas,” said 
Uncle Nathan softly. 

“He’s a funny duck,” thought Vacla. “Old- 
fashioned.” 

“There is a written tradition,” said the 
Doctor, “that the study of medicine makes a 
man very good, or very bad. When I find 
anything better than Christianity, I am ready 
to give it up. The man of intellect can per- 
haps create his own beautiful fable, but to the 
poor, to the suffering, to those who have lost 
everything, and those who have nothing to lose, 
there is no belief like the belief in Christ. 
Without it the poor die like dogs. Life is a 
continual going on. It rises, it falls, it changes, 
but it goes on. I am the dust man, that people 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


69 


call in when trouble comes. When I have been 
very necessary, out in the middle of the night, 
giving hope to the anxious, trying to save a 
hfe that is needed beyond human conception, 
the grateful ones send me perhaps a little flower 
at Christmas, and then they forget me, Nathan, 
until trouble comes again. I am just an old 
dustman, there when peace is lacking, and per- 
haps I hold a dustman’s views. Man’s noblest 
desires, what are they? To do our duty, we 
must do it with what is best in us. And to do 
our best, we must possess om* soul in peace. 
For the physician, the shadow of death lies upon 
life. There is much that we encounter, that 
the eye cannot see, and it is impossible for us 
to be happy as they are who live for happiness 
alone. One man dare not die without a priest. 
Another beheves that all ends in this world. 
The things that matter are to look fearlessly 
on life; to have peace and confidence within 
om- souls.” 

“Old-fashioned duck,” Vacla thought again. 

“You believe in the ‘brotherhood of man?’ ” 
he asked. 

“My nephew is a materialist,” interrupted 
Uncle Nathan. 

“I do,” said the old Doctor. 


70 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“Liberty,” quoted Vacla, “is the right to do 
that which is permitted by law. Why may I 
not pursue my own course and under the law 
work for my own benefit? The masses never 
inquire into the inner meaning of things. They 
are carried by their leaders from one disap- 
pointment to another. It is all the same to 
them who leads them. I believe there is no 
chance to-day in any country for the masses 
as a mass.” 

The Doctor smiled. “There is a force that 
has no name. It is an eternal spring.” 

“This boy here is an individualist,” said 
Uncle Nathan. 

Vacla tried vainly to put forth one of his 
arguments, but an emptiness crowded into his 
brain. He let them talk on. The old genera- 
tion talked, and he the young one listened. The 
thing was unbelievable, that he could ever come 
to their views. His thought cautioned him. 
Life was failing them. They met together to 
bolster each other up. They would not admit 
it, but they were fearful. They needed each 
other. Well, well! They had their ideas. Out 
of his dream of his own isolation, he derived 
strength. Out of the eternal disorder, to the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 71 

young and the strong came accomplishment of 
known and definite ends. 

“Their ideas are out of date,” he said. 

The old Doctor knocked out his pipe. “I 
must be getting on my rounds,” he objected. 

“You’ll have a little cheer,” said Uncle 
Nathan nodding his chin. He went to a tray 
and poured some whiskey into two glasses. 
“The boy here doesn’t,” he explained. He 
filled them from a syphon. He handed one to 
the Doctor. 

The Doctor nodded, raised his glass. “Some 
day you will come around to our views,” he said 
to Vacla. “When that day comes, as that book 
of Maeterlinck says, there will be ‘enchantment 
for the disenchanted.’ ” 

“Funny duck,” said Vacla when the door 
closed. 


CHAPTER X 


Natalie looked out of the window at the 
leaves, falling, falling, falling in the autumn 
air. The vine against the side of the house was 
bare. The branches of the oak tree were almost 
bare. ^Vhen a gust of wind came, a leaf de- 
tached itself and then turned over and over as 
it fell. The leaves attracted her and hurt her. 
They attracted her as things changing, passing 
away, things that to-morrow would be gone. 
They hurt her because they were powerless, 
defenceless in the wind. The wind ripped them 
and carried them away. 

Something inside Natalie rebelled against 
the autumn. Aimt Clara did not like it, be- 
cause it gave her rheumatism. Aunt Anne 
did not like it, because it reminded her of the 
wrinkles that crept yellowing up her neck. 
Everything in the world would one day come 
to an end. Natalie hated the autunrn. She 
was a pagan. She loved life and imperishable 
things. 

Aunt Anne and Aunt Clara came down the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


73 


stairs. They were going out. Natalie listened. 
Aunt Clara called her and she went out into 
the hall. 

“If you want tea, you must teU the new 
housemaid,” said Aunt Anne. She caught 
sight of Natalie’s feet. “You must not wear 
your boots in the house,” she said. “You re- 
member, I have told you that.” 

“I thought I might go out again,” Natalie 
apologised with an almost imperceptible shrug 
of her shoulders. She went back to the draw- 
ing-room window and watched them go down 
the street. Aunt Clara was short and a little 
stout ; Aunt Anne thin and old. A minute ago 
she had been angry with them, now she forgave 
them. After all they did their best by her in 
their way. 

She was still watching them with the curtain 
drawn, when she saw a figure come up the little 
path from the street. The strange man took 
olf his hat and waved it. Natalie recognised 
Vacla. He laughed at her impreparedness. 
She did not even open the window. He mo- 
tioned to the front door and went in its direc- 
tion. He stood on the steps and the leaves 
drifted dcKrn. And Natalie, wanting what the 
world had to give, opened the door. 


74 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


‘T am lucky,” he said, “to find you in. I 
happened to pass your aunts. They did not 
see me. I wondered if you were at home. 
I hope I am not troubling you ; if I am I will 
go away.” 

“No,” said Natalie, “you may stay.” 

He followed her into the drawing room. She 
rang the bell and presently when the young 
housemaid came, she ordered tea. 

Vacla sat looking at her. He looked at her 
carefully, from the brown, curly head to her 
feet crossed under her. A dispirited expres- 
sion was in her face, the look of the trapped 
animal that know^s that the trap cannot be 
broken. This expression combined with her 
extreme youth made an appealing charm. 

“Why do you look like that?” he asked, 
“you are so yotmg.” 

A force was hurling past them sweeping the 
barriers down. 

She shook her head. “I look very much hke 
everyone else,” she answered. The force was in 
the room scattering prejudices and habits, the 
things that keep passion out of life. 

“We are intended to be happy,” said Vacla. 

Natalie played with the cuff links of her 
blouse. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


75 


“The purpose of my life is to do the will of 
that Power which has sent me here. That is 
what I have been taught to believe,” she added. 

Vacla put his hands in his pockets and leaned 
back in his chair. “It is too serious, too 
intense.” Hesitat'ng for a moment to see 
whether he had offended her, Vacla began to 
talk, not- to put her at her ease, because she 
seemed marvellously at ease, but to cheer her, to 
arouse her. He told her of his life in New 
York, of Isaacson, of his bald head and the 
fly that always seemed to find its way there. 
He told her of the apartment, of his Chippen- 
dale, of his “findings” in auction rooms, and she 
listened in a kind of absorption. And as the 
little housemaid came in to bring the tea, he 
confessed to his one sentiment — ^his love for 
his impulsive mother. His tentative effort to 
amuse her with now and then a flash of serious- 
ness was bringing a response. 

When they were drinking their tea, she said 
rather suddenly, as if a will-o-the-wisp were 
leading her on: 

“A minute ago, when I told you I was here 
to do the will of an unseen Power, I meant I’d 
been taught that, not that I wanted to.” 

“Of course. All that is for people who are 


76 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


done with everything. Life is beastly short, 
one can’t miss things.” 

“Yes,” she answered dreamily, “shorter for a 
girl than a man, and the rules they give us to 
go by are hke old time-tables. The trains do 
not run by them any more.” 

“You’ll marry some day, and get away.” 

“No, I won’t. I never meet anyone, very 
much. If I do, there are always two or three 
people there, listening to what I am saying. 
It shuts me up in a box and smacks down the 
lid.” 

“But you must marry. This is all very well 
now, but in ten or fifteen years what will there 
be for you here?” 

“I suppose it will be the same. I made a 
chum once, a girl at school. We beeame great 
friends. I used to go to her house, but after 
a time I found I couldn’t ask her here. She 
seemed to expeet it. I couldn’t ask the Aunts 
to let me have her, it might have put them out. 
They are very good to me, but they keep me 
because of duty. Sometimes I pretend, when 
I am out, that there will be a letter for me when 
I get baek, to say I am to go away. I almost 
believe it. I hurry home and actually look on 
the hall table. Silly, isn’t it?” 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 77 

Vacla frowned. “I think it is a dashed 
shame!” 

“Ah, but you mustn’t. They are good to 
me, but I have the wrong time-table.” 

Without quite knowing how, they found 
themselves pushing their way into each other’s 
confidence. Each other’s thoughts hollowed 
in the other’s mind a little nest. The fire in 
the grate was burning. The logs had become 
great embers, only one of them, which was wet, 
went on smoking and cracking. 

“You must be my little friend,” said Vacla. 
She drew from him a kind of tenderness, a 
something out of nothing, like the sim draws 
the flowers from the earth. He talked again, 
and Natalie listened with a dreamy smile. For 
a moment he remembered the evening in New 
York when a phantom seemed to come through 
from the street, something that he needed to 
assuage his mood. Something pulled at his 
heart ; pity perhaps ; the thought of youth flung 
into life too soon. Something was coming up 
to them. Something was wrapping them 
around. Time the relentless, the fugitive 
ticked on. 

“I must go,” he said suddenly. He felt her 
eyes centre on him as if gazing at what she had 


78 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


seen before. She looked as if something had 
made her afraid. He went abstractedly to the 
door. Their silence held to emotion a beckon- 
ing hand, “Silly,” he said to himself. 

He went into the hall and got his hat, his 
coat, his gloves. He counted them. He had 
everything, then he remembered he hadn’t said 
good-bye. Natalie was standing looking at the 
fire. 

“I have so much to tell you,” he said, “to- 
morrow on the moimtain.” 

They heard the sound of a bell ringing. It 
was Aunt Anne and Aunt Clara coming home. 


CHAPTER XI 


Natalie^s first memory of those walks with 
Vacla was always the meeting by the reservoir. 
The second was a wooded slope carpeted with 
golden leaves. They were sitting on a fallen 
tree watching a squirrel eating a nut held be- 
tween its two front feet. The golden colours 
of the autumn wood tinged by the setting sun 
were displaying their opulence. 

Natalie never could in retrospect follow out 
in her own mind the sequence of what followed. 
One moment she was sitting on the trunk 
watching the squirrel, the next Vacla’s arms 
were round her, and she felt his cheek pressed 
against hers. It was a moment that struck off 
of its own accord, like instinct in the path of 
some known trail. 

“I must go home,” she said breathlessly, and 
broke from him running over the autumn 
leaves. Vacla was the fawn in pursuit. He 
overtook her while still under the trees. A 
quick capture with her brown coat hugged close 
to his grey tweed one. A moment, then they 
79 


80 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


started out to the road and swung home with 
a rhythmic stride. Golden leaves and love in- 
deed. A delirium relaxed. Away from him 
Natalie could not put him out of her mind. 
Funnily enough, in spite of her strict upbring- 
ing, she was not shocked that at their fourth 
meeting Vacla had Idssed her. For all her 
youth she took it in strange gravity, as a gift 
bestowed, but on one alone and therefore im- 
possible of being cheapened, even though it 
came quickly. Sometimes the clash of their 
personalities set up a discord. They disagreed, 
aloof with nothing to bring them together. 
They remained detached. On the whole per- 
haps, that is the way of every love affair. 

But on those evenings, Natalie longed for 
Aunt Anne to make the move, that meant bed- 
time had come. It was one of the unwritten 
laws of the house that Aunt Anne made the 
suggestion when bed-time had arrived. How 
old-fashioned they were in following their httle 
formula! Their friends were fewer than they 
had been in the old days, and those who came 
to the house generally came to afternoon tea, 
or to luncheon. Thus the evenings were im- 
eventful. Aimt Clara, and Aunt Anne, and 
the formula. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


81 


Aunt Anne knitting, her wool in a black 
satin bag, as if it too had changed for dinner. 
Modestly high necked, but changed. Natalie 
with a piece of embroidery. Aunt Clara with a 
book to read aloud. Family reading; humour- 
ous; whimsical with no shocking passages; 
occasionally perhaps Miss Havergal’s poems, 
or extracts from the Church Times. The first 
intimation that the evening was over was the 
opening of Aunt Anne’s bag. It received the 
knitting, then she pulled the ribbons together 
and closed the bag, and made this remark: — • 
“Clara, you can’t see to read any more. You 
are straining your eyes.” The remark meant 
that Aunt Anne’s interest had lapsed. 

One evening when Aunt Anne put down her 
knitting, she put Natalie through a catechism. 
It seemed that someone had seen her walking 
on the mountain with Vacla. To Aunt Anne 
it was like discovering a personality in what 
had hitherto been impersonal. Her philosophy 
of life did not keep pace with Natalie’s. Said 
Aunt Anne: 

“Natalie, you and young Mr. Melfort were 
seen walking in the Park.” 

Natalie was surprised, taken unawares. 

“I did not altogether like him,” Aunt Anne 


82 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


said. “I thought him a little free and easy; 
modern manners. "Why didn’t you tell your 
Aunt Clara and me you had met him? Was 
it accidental?” Aunt Anne paused ominously. 

Natahe wished to answer, but how? She 
couldn’t say it was accidental. One didn’t lie 
actually. And yet she dare not say it was ar- 
ranged. She fumbled, “O! I don’t know.” 

“Nonsense!” said Aunt Anne briskly, “that 
is a favorite expression of yours, ‘O! I don’t 
know.’ But about the young man. Don’t have 
any romantic idea of marriage with him. His 
uncle tells me he is very ambitious, and that 
it will be years before he can settle down.” 

The sight of the blood rushing into Natalie’s 
cheeks gave Aunt Anne some satisfaction, be- 
cause she added in a gentle tone: 

“If he has any serious intentions, he can come 
forward in a proper manner and ask the con- 
sent of those who are responsible for you.” The 
remark was followed by a long silence. 

Aunt Clara broke the hush. 

“I thought him quite a nice young man,” 
she smiled timidly in Natahe’s direction. To 
go against Aunt Anne meant courage. 

“Nonsense, Clara, you don’t know anything 
about men and never did.” Natalie did not see 


83 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 

Aunt Clara’s championage. She was strug- 
gling to preserve her composure. She had 
some self-command, but she was glad to fold 
up her work and go upstairs to her own bed- 
room. 

She was aware of Vacla as she had never 
been aware of any human being before. She 
felt him as something sohd and strong and 
trustworthy beyond measure ; further as a 
chance of escape, as the open door to Her cage. 
When she left him and came home, it was as 
though a cavity entered a cavity. She felt 
hollowed, empty, coming into a house that was 
hollow and empty. 

Natalie hid this new interest in life, hid it 
knowing that if it became known it would be 
confiscated, tamed down to something conven- 
tional and along dull lines. Every natural 
instinct was put in chains. 

There came an evening when Aunt Clara and 
Aunt Anne went out. Vacla was to watch; 
then knock on the glass of the front door. If 
all looked propitious, she was to let him in. 

She was exalted, excited, her face shining 
with a wistful admiration. He was strength 
and egotism. He put his arm around her, and 
there was again that force, that fatality in the 


84 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


room that drew them together. Meeting was 
the anodyne of emptiness. Her excitement 
communicated itself. Her exaltation made a 
queer spiritual appeal. 

Vacla’s hand sought hers, he said words he 
had not intended. The three words that were 
to her a vow: “I love you,” in a whisper as he 
watched her sitting slim and white-frocked be- 
side him. Their hands were still joined. He 
took his away. Her hand crept to his coat and 
gave it a little tug. 

“Will you meet me to-morrow?” 

“Perhaps it would be better if I shouldn’t.” 

“Don’t you want to?” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“Be nice to me,” she said relinquishing her 
hold. 

An intimacy enveloped them, as if they were 
bound together by some tie. The room became 
beautiful, glowing. The flames swept up the 
chimney in a kind of ecstasy. 

He took her face in his hands and kissed her. 

“Do you like me?” she asked with a laugh, 
tugging at his coat again. He was awkward, 
clumsy. His clumsiness reassured her. Al- 
though only nineteen, she sensed it meant lack 
of practise. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


85 


“Brother and sister,” she said. 

“No,” he answered, “not exactly.” 

Her lips parted. 

“What then?” 

“Lovers,” he said. 

She still held his coat. She made a pleat 
in it with her finger and thumb, her face be- 
came grave. 

“You aren’t fight about those things?” 

“Rather not.” He would have sworn any- 
thing to reassure her. He wanted to kiss her 
again. His arm crept round her waist. 

“You are rather a darling,” he said. 

He expected her to deny it, but she didn’t. 
Her face beamed starry like a parched moon- 
flower suddenly moistened by dew. 

“Tell me,” she said, as though she did not 
know the meaning of her words, “what is love 
like?” 

“Music,” he answered, trying to answer in 
her own mood. “It fills all the emptiness like 
music.” 

“Some people say that there is no such thing 
as love at first sight. Aren’t they silly?” 

“Yes,” he nodded. 

“Will it last always?” 

He nodded again. She drew it from him 


86 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


against his wish. He felt she took it too 
seriously. The clock struck ten. He rose to 
go. Letting him out, she buried herself between 
the arms of his tweed coat. 

Aunt Anne and Aunt Clara came home. 

In this age of emancipation it is difficult to 
realize that a girl could not naturally be friends 
with a man of her own class, but Natalie was 
sensitive to atmosphere, and the atmosphere 
was constraint. 

Once upstairs, Natalie was thinking of 
Vacla. “I won’t give up seeing him,” she said 
defiantly. “Why should I ?” 

To make sure of what one could in hfe, that 
was the thing. How could Aimt Anne and 
Avmt Clara know? The waters of emotion had 
receded years ago. Old as the hills, they were, 
old as the hills. And into her thoughts the 
poison ran rife. She put her face against the 
cool glass of the window. “I love him!” she 
said out loud to her room. 

The avmts had taught her to pray. She 
sensed things to which she had no key. Prayer 
was a groping for something needed. She flung 
herself beside her bed. 

“O! God give him to me!” she whispered, 
“give him to me!” 


CHAPTER XII 

The irresistible masculine tendency to con- 
quer was in danger of mastering Vacla, yet 
Vacla the egotist with an ache that periodically 
arraigned itself for a large assuagement; Vacla 
looked at this from his own point of view and 
paused. Like many another of his type with a 
strong selfishness, he combined a kind heart. 
With Natahe, she moved him by her prettiness, 
by the candle light that burned within her, by 
her clinging to him. Away from her, she 
seemed frail, insufficient. He sensed it, a rest- 
ing of a hundred poimd weight on a lily of the 
valley. But in part he was kind, he would not 
have thrust away a puppy that came to him 
for protection, so he took the trouble to argue 
it out, that as she was a yoimg woman of only 
nineteen, it was impossible that any event 
should have left upon her an impression that 
was not in time capable of being obhterated. 
Better stop their walks now. His business was 
nearly accomplished, then he would return to 
New York and forget her. Silence this half- 
87 


88 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


conscious rhapsodic, avoid profundities. This 
was a passing love, for love’s own sake — ^noth- 
ing more. 

Saith Vinevar of the long fingers and the 
ebony cane: “The King of Israel shall not be 
influenced by his passions.” 

“Closed,” was over the episode, “by order.” 

Five or six days passed in silence. Natalie 
went every day to the mountain. It was diffi- 
cult always to be free at three o’clock to go to 
their meeting-place, but on one pretext or an- 
other she had managed it. Once outside the 
house, she almost ran. Every day she returned 
deeply troubled. What was he doing? What 
was he going to do? WTiy did he not send her 
word? Such is human inconsistency that al- 
though she had told him not to write for fear of 
her aunts’ objecting, yet she looked for a letter 
at every post. 

At last one day they met by accident. 

All day long the snow had fallen in heavy 
soft flakes. It whirled and fell and drifted, and 
the wind took it and made imeven banks. The 
snow covered the dust. It buried the few leaves, 
that the street-cleaners had allowed to escape. 
It deadened sound. The world ceased to be an 
outline and became a mist; mysticism and a 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


89 


kind of ecstasy. People were carried along in 
a sort of gentle whirlwind. 

Through the snow Vacla hurried, his hands 
in his pockets, his head down. Through the 
snow Natalie walked blindly, their paths steadi- 
ly converging. It was dark. The corner light 
blazed up with a sizzle. The darkness became 
full of phantoms. The streets in front of the 
houses were covered by snow. The branches 
of the trees, all white, were like outstretched 
arms. Vacla saw them but they made no ap- 
peal to him, only sound penetrated to his heart, 
not form. In the windows, lights behind the 
blinds. Vacla with his head down pushed on, 
musing. A man’s mind could hold only a cer- 
tain sum of new creative ideas. With the 
maximum amount carried, everything else must 
be thrown aside, to hghten the craft. A capable 
economy meant progress, rapid progress. The 
groups must be eliminated, the units left — the 
patriotic sentiment, the influences which arm 
and disarm, even the love of those who are on 
a level with our own souls, are attributes best 
excluded from a bark scheduled to travel fast. 
Following the tracks of the snow, he took re- 
solve, that to the strong there must be no shelter 
from life’s defeat. 


90 THE CAPTIVE HERD 

It was then that he raised his head and saw 
her. 

She wore a fnr coat, and under a fur cap 
above her ears her hair was covered with snow ; 
he saw that, by the pale green shadow of the 
corner hght. Blindly she put out both hands. 
He took them to keep her from falling. 

“Where have you been?” she asked, “where 
have you been?” 

A little sob caught the words in her throat. 
She choked and drew back her hands. 

He took her hands again and held them in 
his own, and said: “I’ve been busy, I couldn’t 
come.” It was not what he had intended to 
say at all. 

She threw back her head and raised her eyes. 
The snow drifted roimd them and they seemed 
quite alone. Quickly V acla bent and kissed her. 

Leaning together they stood a minute in 
silence. He put his two hands on her shoul- 
ders and pushed her gently away. 

“I didn’t mean to do that,” he muttered. 
“You are a darling, and the storm is exhilarat- 
ing. It makes one want to live forever.” 

“They don’t want us to be friends,” she said. 

“Why not?” 

“You see, I’m just a niece. And they are old- 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


91 


fashioned. And they don’t approve of uncon- 
ventional ways.” 

Something in her face said more than her 
words, and other words bubbled up in him than 
those he intended. Quickly he looked up and 
down the deserted street. 

“Poor little kid !” he said hoarsely, and pulled 
her close to him again. 

Assuagement ; assuagement for a moment in 
the drifting snow. 

As he left her, the bells rang out across the 
snow, the church bells calling the faithful to 
evensong, a soxmd to which none can put a name 
that describes it aptly. A sound made doubly 
poignant by the crisp air; a sound like voices 
searching in the darkness for response. 

Vacla heard it. A thrill ran through him and 
he smiled. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Once more the flashing glitter of New York 
laid hold, and in its movement it was not easy 
to preserve a balance of values. Exceptional 
character might have triumphed over the pecu- 
har combinations of temptation set forth. Born 
in an epoch which specially coerced some deci- 
sive tendencies, Vacla did not so triumph. By 
the emptied culmination of his home life on the 
death of his parents and the menacing isolation 
into which this termination threw him, he had 
evolved a conception of existence that was of a 
drastic egotism. Egotism was in him a growth, 
a growth of wayward tissue, worked upon by 
the spirit of the age. He evolved a dream of 
personal aggrandisement, a dream wherein the 
practical life was intensely developed, the in- 
ner life left a neglected growth. Personal ag- 
grandisement at personal risk became a slogan. 
He took chances, that he might become a force 
to be reckoned with more quickly. 

At first he remembered Natalie. It seemed 
to him that he could feel her glance, her move- 
92 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


95 


merits, the clinging quality of her hands ; but in 
time New York absorbed him and the memory 
of her became less distinct. A strange good 
luck pursued him. He had hardly to enter an 
office before he had secured a large order for 
the bonds, the bonds put upon the market by 
Vinevar and Isaacson. 

“Natahe and failure, I cannot connect the 
two,” he said to himself. 

She would come out all right, would re- 
adjust without him. As for him, he wanted no 
woman as yet. When he did, Natahe might not 
be the one most necessary to him. 

One evening, having realized Vacla’s ex- 
traordinary success, Isaacson invited him to 
come and dine. 

“The missus will be there, but we can have 
our smoke,” he said with his tired smile. This 
smile was particularly characteristic of him to 
Vacla. It was the effort of cheer made by a 
man whose efforts had been so herculean, that 
cheer in the irresponsible sense was no longer 
possible. It was the wistful smile of the self- 
made man. 

In that happy state of companionship and 
mutual good-will which is the outcome of the 
post-dinner mood, resultant from a good slice 


94 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


of the joint, Mr. Isaacson smiled with tired 
good-humour. 

“Dear me,” he said cutting the end of a very 
fat cigar, “our young friend here. Mother,” he 
nodded to Mrs. Isaacson seated leisurely with 
her hands clasped idly upon her lace front, “our 
young friend. Mother, is to be congratulated 
upon his activities.” 

Mr. Isaacson invariably began an evening in 
this way. He complimented his guest. He 
commended him to Mrs. Isaacson, thus putting 
the company on the very best terms with them- 
selves, and with each other. 

There followed a little divergence from the 
subject in hand, wherein Mr. Isaacson proved 
by testimony that Mrs. Isaacson enjoyed his 
fullest trust and confidence. The guest watch- 
ing Mrs. Isaacson at that moment would have 
seen a sigh swell the proportion of the lace 
front, a sigh of perfect contentment, after which 
her hands again settled themselves in quiet 
idleness. 

“He has done well,” said Mr. Isaacson. “I 
am proud of his activities.” Mr. Isaacson 
shifted his cigar from the middle to the corner 
of his mouth while he talked, and then with the 
inside help of his tongue, brought it back to its 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


95 


old place again when his remark was made. 
His broad face showed symptoms of being 
about to convey information. Isaacson, the 
son of a prophetic people, loved to air his views. 

“Study peoples,” he began. “Beware of 
portraits, painted with a very free brush where 
one side is all shadow, the other all light. The 
salient traits of nations are disappearing be- 
neath the pressure of modem hfe. Life holds 
many possibilities of failure. As a race we 
have a strong will, that is the secret of our 
success in Russia. The Slavs grovel before 
strength of wiU, they wanted a master and 
they have taken this bondage upon themselves. 
Study the science of hmnan nature. If you are 
strong, search out the tendencies of the weak. 
All humanity presents itself in plastic form to 
those who have great strength of will.” 

At that moment the telephone rang. It was 
characteristic of Isaacson that in spite of hav- 
ing bought an ornate and pretentious house, he 
had only one telephone. He had a reason for it. 
He did not wish his affairs overheard by the 
inquisitive ear of some listening servant. He 
went across the hall to his study to answer it 
himself. In a moment, he returned saying it 
was a long-distance call from Sunnytown. 


96 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Vacla glanced at Mrs. Isaacson. She was 
sitting in a leather rocking-chair whose mahog- 
any base rocked in a firm mahogany stand. It 
was the nearest approach to a rocking-chair 
she could have in this room. She rocked, gently 
moving the tips of her toes. At the name of 
Sunnytown a soft expression came into her face. 

“It makes me think of the time we lived 
there,” she said. “Jacob wasn’t so busy, and 
he was almost always at home in the evenings. 
In the summer evenings we used to sit on the 
porch.” 

Out of the shallow darkness of memory this 
pictme presented itself, an inconsecutive 
beauty, among the memories of life. It reached 
the surface of her mind and took form. She 
considered, hardly aware of her spoken words, 
bringing facts out of this forgotten mystery. 

“Why even then he thought of buying this 
grocery. It backed on a little row of houses 
that he’d got. I wish he had. I am a regular 
fish out of water with this money. A nice little 
corner grocery and able to take an interest in 
it”^ — she reflected for a moment — “well, now 
he’s thinking of buying it again.” 

Vacla pricked up his ears. Isaacson buying 
a corner grocery. Isaacson the man of vision, 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


97 


with a Semitic dream of his people back in 
Palestine. Isaacson with more money than he 
could bring himself to spend. There was some- 
thing behind all this. He watched her with 
renewed interest. 

“Of course, it is no use getting excited over 
it, but a nice little comer grocery back in 
Sunnytown, now that we are not so yovmg as 
we were” — she rounded her conversation with a 
persistent rocking. 

Back from the telephone sitting in his arm- 
chair Isaacson talked again, but he was not dis- 
posed to mention the nature of his long-distance 
call. Every phrase, every remark betrayed 
both knowledge and power. He understood his 
own race thoroughly, and his comments on 
them were unerringly shrewd. He spoke as a 
man in whom life had succeeded in wearing 
away pettiness. Isaacson the man of talent was 
not bitter, Vinevar the man of genius was 
bitter. 

“Yes, yes,” he continued, “the Jew has kept 
his energy, but he has kept it within him out 
of sight. Only the strong, the energetic have 
survived. The vacillating, the weak have been 
eliminated by the centuries. They have suc- 
cumbed to persecutions, or the attractions of 


98 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


other religions. We have come through fire 
and water, during twenty centuries of suffer- 
ing. It is hard to say what is left in the Jewish 
soul after all that is past ; perhaps Vinevar alone 
could tell you. Vinevar knows.” 

As Vacla walked home he meditated upon 
Isaacson’s sayings. Very naturally he resented 
his reference to Russia, declaring that the Jew 
ruled there because the Slav had no will. Vacla 
was in the pay of these men, was he falling a 
prey to their ideals? No. He worked for them 
while it suited him; when they were no longer 
needful, he would show his independence, then 
he would no longer crouch before these Princes 
in Israel. So as he walked his thoughts tossed 
from side to side. 

Why did Isaacson want to buy that property 
in Sunnytown? He knew a lot of the details of 
his business, but not this. Suddenly he remem- 
bered a headline in the evening paper lying on 
Isaacson’s desk. It was “Chesapeake and Ohio 
will build new Union Station at Simnytown.” 
Vacla bit his lip. 

“I learn from the Princes in Israel,” he said, 
with a smile. “I am on.” 


CHAPTER XIV 

Vacla was now in the training school of 
action, a phase where the inner life is subordi- 
nate and the life of action is too often poorly 
disciplined in thought and goodness. Partly, 
perhaps, because of youth, partly it was lack 
of knowledge that kept the variations of the 
word “individual,” forever on his lips. “Indi- 
viduality,” that quality that differentiates a 
man from his fellows, became to him a symbol, 
a symbol of the power to take, and taking was 
fast becoming the motive of his being. He was 
of the new order of public men. Their motto 
was: “Personal aims, personal power at per- 
sonal risk.” When he drove through Fifth Ave- 
nue as for the moment he was driving through 
life, smiling, successful, acquisitive, expounding 
in his business conversations the propaganda 
of the Individual, he was not yet become con- 
scious of one fact, the relation of the Individual 
to the State and Society, in which he finds him- 
self. Germany is a warlike example of blind 
will-power, determined to force its way with 
99 


100 THE CAPTIVE HERD 

life a game and men mere counters to be used. 
The new spirit, the spirit of wealth at all costs, 
was working like a poison in his veins. 
Shrewdly to his purpose, he gathered, he 
worked, he bought, he sold. And his undertak- 
ings were crowned with success. Successfully 
he skated over thin ice and to his own surprise 
it held. Go-ahead days these were. Go-ahead 
days! 

In the office, on one occasion, a subject was 
broached hastily by Isaacson. 

“Had Vacla heard? That bit of property 
he was after in Sunnytown had been snatched 
from him, between the cup and the lip. Just 
a matter of two thousand, Isaacson was holding 
out for a better price. Then overnight some 
unknown hand had snatched it. Now the 
Chesapeake & Ohio might be diverted to 
another site. Had Vacla heard?” Isaacson 
watched him narrowly. 

Vacla shook his head. 

Skating over thin ice ; learning, learning, ever 
learning of the art of dissimulation. Humanity 
a stagnant pool into which fate cast its nets. 
The years flowed by. The teens gave place 
to the twenties, the twenties to the thirties and 
Fate fashioned personahty ; Fate drew up from 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 101 


the pool with an absurd sureness just what was 
there. Just what the quiet Englishman, Wynd- 
ham Melfort, would have thought of him, he 
wondered once for a brief moment. Wyndham 
Melfort had been at Winchester; Melfort the 
old Wykehamist, with his motto, “Manners 
maketh the man.” Not so, Vacla son of his 
impulsive mother. Tar sticks, adheres fatally. 
And training, the atmospheric influence of 
manner sticks intermittently piecemeal like tar. 
The son of Melfort of Winchester retained a 
spasmodic imitation of his father’s manner, un- 
valued consciously. 

“Extraordinary,” said Isaacson puffing his 
inevitable cigar, “how Melfort always comes 
across.” 

“It is on the surface,” answered Vinevar. 
“Superficiality. A pleasant and convincing 
manner.” 

But Vacla was embarked on his first offence. 
He confronted himself in the night court of 
home criticism. Why the devil had he done it? 
Once done, it seemed not only unworthy, but 
not worth while. His better natme protested. 
Isaacson had been friendly with him, and he 
had used information received at Isaacson’s 
house to his own gain and Isaacson’s loss. His 


102 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


conscience lifted up its head. He looked for a 
club to stun it to unconsciousness. His chiefs 
were using him. As soon as they had derived 
what benefit they could from his efforts, they 
would dismiss him, dispense with his services, 
turn him down. He took up that club and with 
it he smote his living conscience on the head. 

He salved his conscience and sped on. He 
had two spectres now to lay. The vision of 
Natalie, white, starry-eyed, with the snow on 
her lips, fleeing in the storm from something to 
him. That vision changed by him into a spectre 
watching for something promised, that did not 
intend to return. And the spectre of Isaacson 
kindly, generous, inviting him to a slice of the 
joint, and craftily being tricked by the friend 
making use of information to his loss. Two 
spectres now confronted him, to be laid by his 
new modern self. 

It is the materialist who says what matters it 
whence comes the cloud so long as it rains? 
This was a new self that took for its adoration 
the hum, the roar, the movement of the city. 
Often he opened his window to hear it, the sound 
of the spending of vitality, that he meant to 
direct, to use eventually when he had learned 
what he needed to know. Sometimes as he closed 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 103 


the window and went back into the room, the 
wish to have Natalie there white-faced, mysteri- 
ous, starry-eyed, asking from him something 
he had not planned to give, sometimes the 
wish that he might come home and find her 
waiting for him, came to his mind, but he stilled 
it, with that new power he was developing of 
stilling everything that lay in the path of gain. 
Upon the plateau that lies between adolescence 
and middle age, he saw a flower, slender- 
stemmed, starry, bending its fragrance in the 
winds of life, a something precious, but he trod 
on it, and marched on. His plans, his inten- 
tions, his labours were his life. The manner of 
Wyndham the Wykehamist carried him at this 
juncture. “Superficial,” condemned Vinevar. 
The apple was perfect on the outside, firm and 
rosy with not a hint of divergence. 

His successes mounted, and with them the 
first fear departed. The thin ice held. As his 
moral nature weakened his material prosperity 
grew. 

The hopes, the admonitions of his father were 
forgotten. He was swept away by an invincible 
rhapsodie of successful action. And yet he was 
getting very little in return for what he was 
losing, — stocks and bonds in retinm for chivalry 


104 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


the imperishable, and honour, that priceless coat 
of shining armour. 

The manners of the Wykehamist carried 
him. He had in a barren market raised seven 
millions. 

The Princes of Israel were content, and 
Vacla was on the top of the wave. 


PABT TWO 
THE CLEPSEDRA 


‘^In the blood-stream of your body are quadrillions 
of little entities — so many millions in a single drop — 
whose total destiny apparently is to your life, as yours 
is to the race — and no more. They hurry, that you may 
live. They toil that you may smile, seek, yearn, blaze 
with ecstasy. A fraction of a minute each, and their 
little cycles have been run. So yours here. But do they 
know? Or care? Or do you? Aside from the smallest 
modicum of service, which you may render at top speed 
and with the utmost enthusiasm, nature has not the 
slightest care for you, or yours. Only the ways of life 
must be kept fresh and new: the illusion of newness and 
vigor maintained/' 


Ashtoreth. 


CHAPTER XV 


Then a strange change occurred. So far 
New York had been to Vacla a triumphant 
march ; go further, say an abnormally easy tri- 
umphant march. Hardly pressing his claims 
in asking for co-operation, co-operation had 
been thrust on him. Success at first made him 
glow. He sensed the conqueror’s pride in feel- 
ing hard barriers become plastic, cleave and 
give way. 

“The young Gentile!” exclaimed Isaacson 
half in wonder, half in envy, as though per- 
chance the non-Semitic race qualities helped in 
some curious way. So success crowned his ef- 
forts for a while. And then with an instability 
of purpose that is so peculiarly her own. Fate 
swerved widely round. A common obstinacy 
dominated her. Vacla with all his assurance 
could not raise a loan. Against this curious dis- 
order of events at first, he preserved a smiling 
calm. He had succeeded so mightily. It could 
be but a passing phase. Having learned Isaac- 
son’s trick of quoting Scripture, he referred to 
107 


108 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


the lesson of Joseph and the seven lean years in 
Egypt. One could not expect success — pros- 
perity — corn — all the time. There were to be 
the seven years of plenty followed by the seven 
lean years. 

“It has no mysterious significance,” ex- 
plained Vacla to Isaacson, “it is merely a mis- 
placed variation.” 

Nevertheless Isaacson, the old stager, took 
pains to confer with Vinevar. 

Vinevar shook his head. “We cannot offer 
the bonds any further below face value,” he 
said, “but we can vary the denominations from 
one himdred, instead of having them only in 
thousands.” 

Vinevar looked narrowly at Isaacson. 

“I intend,” he said, “to raise the price arti- 
ficially, on the pretext that everybody hurried 
to buy the bonds; but before I do that more 
must be sold. I counsel you, Isaacson, to get 
a list of the names of likely subscribers, and see 
that Melfort calls upon each one of these in 
person. It is necessary before I can go on in 
my plan, that more bonds be sold. We are a 
capable and energetic people appointing al- 
ways the right man to the right place. If Mel- 
fort be the right man, he can sell these bonds. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 109 


On to Moscow,” said Vinevar smiling, “on to 
Moscow!” 

Thus Vinevar, the hand on the tiller, set 
forth his orders. 

Fresh from his interview Isaacson compiled 
a list of names, important names. One he un- 
derlined, a man of many enterprises and much 
disposable capital. 

Viewing with amusement Isaacson’s anxiety, 
Vacla determined to interview this man of in- 
fluence first, and having won him, lay the dust 
of Isaacson’s doubts. He arranged an inter- 
view. With an exact sameness of attack he 
approached. Just in the manner that he had 
already raised seven million, he entered the 
office and conducted his interview. But this 
sameness had lost its original power. It was a 
race-horse stretching its neck at the sound, 
“they’re off,” laying back its ears, plunging 
with its fore feet and remaining at the post. 
His formula was as ever, but it refused to 
function. He extolled the cotton-lands, and 
his listener looked at him in unfeigned bore- 
dom. Something that had been alive in Vacla 
had died. 

The great man refused to subscribe to the 
loan. It was a jar to Vacla, but it was not 


110 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


enough to lead his thoughts to a revolution. It 
was, however, sufficient to shake very slightly 
his suave consciousness of power. 

“I must be stale,” he thought trying to 
explain it to himself. The refusal had been 
definite and peremptory. The screen ran on, 
and he chose to forget the picture of himself 
leaving an office, having been insufficient. But 
a consciousness was there as of something 
hidden, yet capable of spreading, something in 
himself that might destroy his power. 

“I am stale,” he thought. After a little 
reaction, a little amusement, it would be easy 
again. 

Once more he saw a face, pale, dark-eyed, 
beautiful, and there stirred in him a ghost of 
warmth. If she were his, his to come home to, 
to gather up as his mother gathered him up, a 
drowsy boy! Only for a moment he thought 
thus, then he pulled himself together. What 
had he to do with such ideas? By his own 
deeds, he was placing himself further and 
fm-ther away from young love. No, he must 
fall into no such reveries. It was one of a piece 
with being stale. Natalie had not what, he 
wanted. With her it was something that she 
wanted him to give her. It was not that she 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 111 


had what he desired. Private aims underlie 
every act of life. That was it, to live for one’s 
own aims. Nothing so great a trouble and 
anxiety that it could not be put away, forgot- 
ten in the movement, the glare, the constant 
bmning of great Manhattan. Nothing so 
alluring that it could not be put away from the 
mind, except perhaps kisses in the snow. 

What was it Natalie had said? 

“Would he be happy when he had attained 
all these things for which he was working?” 

Deuced funny, that kid! Of course, he 
would be happy. He was doing what he in- 
tended to do. Nevertheless, time and again the 
doubts that he could hardly put a name to, 
returned. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Now it happened that Isaacson, as he him- 
self expressed it, “smelt a rat.” He was one of 
those who always know when to transfer the 
dictatorship from the heart to the head. 

“Something on yom* mind, Jacob?” asked 
Mrs. Isaacson, and laid a hand for an instant 
on his shoulder. 

He did not perceive her caress. “It’s a 
shifting of burden, Anna,” he said, “shifting 
from the heart to the head.” He sat thinking, 
recapitulating the trail of thought, that led him 
to suspect. His expression changed slowly. 

“I am going down to Simnytown to-mor- 
row,” he said presently. Mrs. Isaacson’s eye 
travelled instinctively to the level. She saw 
Sunnytown. She tried to speak in an off- 
hand way. 

“You aren’t going to buy the grocery store 
at last?” 

“No fear,” said Isaacson with a sort of 
unwilling admission. “It has been bought 
already.” 


112 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 113 


Mrs. Isaacson’s eyes left the level. She 
crossed the room and sat down on the ma- 
hogany rocking chair. 

“How do you mean, Jacob?” Her face 
looked a little sullen. The thought of Simny- 
town raised an image brighter than anything 
else. The grocery gone was a drawing card 
removed. 

“What I say,” replied Isaacson after a 
pause. “Someone has bought the grocery store 
and the corner block, and I am going down to 
find out who it is.” 

It was a very solemn-faced Isaacson who 
retmned to Manhattan the next evening. His 
blue eyes were paler than usual, and his tired 
face had lost its usual animation, but he didn’t 
go straight home. 

Although it was nearly dinner time and the 
joint was in danger of being overdone, he went 
to Riverside Drive to call upon Mr. Bruns. 
In his apartment in Riverside Drive Mr. Bruns 
lived with his wife, and his two children. In 
the card list of the foyer, he was entered as 
Mr. Samuel G. Bruns. In his office downtown, 
the information, “Confidential Detective,” was 
added. He was a small wiry man with the alert 
quick movements of a ferret. His motto was, 


114 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“Be on your guard.” This he said openly to 
his clients. His method was, “Foster sus- 
picion,” this he kept quietly to himself. 

“I have a shrewd suspicion,” said Isaacson, 
“that a friend of mine has bought a piece of 
property. You will find out if I am right. 
Also, for a time, I want this young friend 
watched.” 

Mr. Bruns noted the names and addresses 
given. 

“It is bad to change horses crossing a 
stream,” said Isaacson to himself. He would 
be glad if his suspicions were unfounded. His 
perturbed face stirred Mr. Bruns, when he 
looked up from his note-book. 

“You can’t take too many precautions,” said 
Mr. Brims. 

In the background through a draped door- 
way Mrs. Bruns was listening. She hastily 
saw that the velvet curtain hid her entirely. 

Isaacson rose and walked towards the front 
door. The training of years was uppermost. 
He had looked on Yacla, as a grown bird would 
contemplate a nestling. Suspect the nestling, 
and the grown bird could show him no quarter. 
His soul looked upon life in general as a trader. 
Let hfe develop complications, it was the trad- 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 115 


er’s instinct, the instinct that takes no loss 
until it is necessary, but when it does, stops 
the leak; that was Isaacson’s. As he came out 
on Riverside Drive evening was falling. The 
north-bound busses were full. The downtown 
offices were disgorging, and the business man 
was going home to rest. The grey-headed and 
the brown-headed alike were going home. The 
north-bound and south-bound busses stopped 
under a lamp. The men on the tops looked 
weary as though the struggle were heavy. His 
bus moved on leaving the white faces, moved 
on past the sweep of a dark deserted cross- 
street. “Strap-hangers,” said Isaacson to him- 
self. “Strap-hangers.” Thousands of them, 
going down every morning, coming back every 
night. His round fat body swayed with the 
motion of the bus. His face was pensive. 
“Strap-hangers.” Pushing, shoving, elbowing 
each other in the ribs for the right to hang 
on and fight. The going down in the morning, 
each with his particular hunting outfit ready 
for the quarry. The lapse of time, and then 
evening and tired faces swaying in the dark. 

t o-day but the eve of to-morrow, and to- 
orrow the eve of what? Thousands and 
^housands caught in a rut. Thousands and 


116 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


thousands of slain hopes caught in the ceaseless 
traffic. 

Isaacson thought of his winnings, the se- 
curities in his safe wrung out of the struggle, 
and no one to inherit them. Once he had 
thought of adopting Vacla, annexing him with 
a view to having him carry on; but there was 
the difference of race, and now things looked 
as though Vacla had done him out of a few 
thousands. A few thousands what were they 
^to him, and yet the forces of habit hold. 

“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” 
he said to himself. 


CHAPTER XVII 


There came one day to the house of Natalie’s 
aimts, in St. Francis Street, a very “purpose- 
ful” young man, attracted there by what Vacla 
had termed to himself the “candle-light” in 
Natalie. But as a rule when a man comes to a 
woman, he does not think about her, he thinks 
about himself. 

If Curtis Browne had shown Natalie a little 
tenderness, a little imderstanding, he might 
perhaps have won her affection. For men of 
his type, love is always reluctant of its dawn- 
ing, but had young Curtis Browne been gifted 
with the gift of understanding, he might with 
patience and understanding have won his 
“ladye faire.” He came, too, with the proper 
credentials, properly introduced; good pros- 
pects, honourable intentions, all of which he set 
vaingloriously before Aunt Anne, when he 
asked her in an accredited manner, if he might 
lay siege to the hand (he did not mention the 
heart) of her niece. 


117 


118 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Aunt Anne during the interview was digni- 
fied, careful of the family honour, in that she 
made several objections and only intimated, 
that she might on some future occasion be 
willing to give her consent. 

Always to Natalie, Curtis Browne had the 
unfortunate effect as if the wrong person had 
come on the stage. To herself, Natalie scorn- 
fully compared the newcomer with Vacla. 

“When Vacla’s hand takes mine, it loves 
mine. Curtis Browne’s hand does not love 
mine,” she said to herself. 

She tried with what knowledge she had to 
fathom the difference in the two men. In 
Vacla she sensed passions, forces, emotions, 
that someone, perhaps she, might set free. 
In Curtis Browne she sensed not so much re- 
straint as an absence of anything needing to 
be restrained. With Vacla life would be a 
play with big scenes. With Curtis Browne, 
the scenes would be hardly big enough to hold 
Ahe attention of the actors, the stagnation of 
I a dream without a dream’s magic. Mr. Curtis 
Browne, however, did not think at all of the 
effect that he was making. He did not see 
clearly the features of the picture, that it was 
different from anything he had known. He 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 119 


did not feel that something extraordinary was 
happening to Natalie, happening to him. He 
did not understand what love might mean to a 
natme such as hers, brought up by a genera- 
tion once removed from its own, that its sweet- 
ness might unlock so many things heretofore 
untouched. No, he approached, sensible in 
every fibre of his being of the beauty of his 
own intentions, and conscious of her point of 
view not at all. And as he tried to win her 
affection by telling her how much his mother, 
his father, his cousins and his aunts thought 
of him, thinking that she would be impressed 
by the general atmosphere of intense esteem in 
which he found himself, Natalie looked past 
him into the shadows, where she saw in mem- 
ory Vacla’s shining eyes. So Curtis Browne 
not only did not make her any happier with 
his attentions, but he made her more definitely 
miserable, more definitely conscious of the 
sense of her desolation. 

“If I never see Vacla again, I shall not be 
able to live,” so she said at her baptism into 
the world where men seek their partners for 
life. Her thoughts of Vacla were like pilgrims 
wandering in a lost path seeking, seeking a 
message. 


120 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Vacla had won man’s greatest triumph over 
woman. He had caught, subdued, conquered 
her imaginative mind. Having done this, it 
was safe for him to leave. The curious evoca- 
tive influence he had with her remained to hide 
itself in every suggestion life makes: in the 
moon sailing through the hurrying clouds; in 
the scent of the rose ; in every refrain of haimt- 
ing music. Once let a man gain the victory 
over a woman’s imagination, and all things 
w'ork to his remembrance. When the sounds 
of the day cease, and the birds sleep and the 
flowers close, music and perfume and the 
silence of the sky will release her thoughts for 
him. 

Natalie listened to the murmur of the voice 
of Mr. Ciutis Browne, summoning images of 
the intensely obvious; his little peculiarities of 
voice, look, manner accentuated by the com- 
monplaceness of his attitude to the world in 
general. 

She met him at a dance and liked him per- 
haps almost more than usual. The music, the 
movement, the excitement in the air helped to 
carry off his dulness. 

Just before supper the orchestra played a 
new “fox-trot.” The rhythm of it appealed 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 121 


to her. She stopped near the violinist and 
asked him the name. 

‘Tt has a funny name, Mademoiselle,” said 
the violinist. “It is called, ‘Kisses in the 
Snow.’ ” 

f Natalie turned and made her way to the 
door of the ball-room. 

I “Take me to supper, Curtis,” she said. “I 
i^m tired.” 

\ “Nonsense,” he answered. “You look as 
fr^sh as a daisy.” He put his arm around her 
waist and they danced on. Natalie’s spirits 
were once more out of tune. How utterly 
careless he was of her desires and requests I 


CHAPTER XVIII 


I Experience^ as the saying goes, is not so 
much a matter of dmation as of intensity. It 
had already begun to appropriate Natalie. 
Nature primeval, unthinking set forth her 
inclinations. Conventional reality, civilized, 
calculating, set forth hers, and between them 
Natalie, the prey, drawn in one direction, ad- 
vised to go to another. The Great Aunts were 
there, watchful providences of her simple faith, 
while Natalie was a prey as it were to her own 
candle-light, her own answering warmth. 

After the night of the ball Natalie began 
to do something she had never done before. 
She began to idealize Vacla. Hitherto she had 
thought of him as a strong force sweeping on 
to its own definite goal, picking her up and 
sweeping her, too, on with it. She had thought 
of him in a primitive way as a means of rescue. 
Now a change came over her, brought about 
by comparing him with the dull self-sufficiency 
of Curtis Browne. Her idealization of Vacla 
122 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 123 


crept into her manner. It was as if something 
within her blossomed, called forth hy this new 
glowing. 

“Men are brutes,” he had once remarked to 
her. “Don’t you trust them.” 

Remembering it, she denied it, changed it to 
her liking; the stone once pushed back, strength 
not brutishness would be revealed. While she 
thought of his strength she was happy. The 
jreally strong man is a brave man, he plays 
mo one false. So in her new experience, she 
reasoned that strength is faithfulness, though 
sometimes in the vagueness of her eyes there 
was a faint cloud of fear. 

“What would I do if he never came back?” 
The thought would come imbidden. There 
was something in her that was himgry, unsatis- 
fied, something which was not only the animal 
attraction of youth and youth, but something 
that stretched out to him, her weakness to his 
strength. And the impotence of Curtis Browne 
seemed to her his impotence to understand her 
needs. At once Vacla had known. 

“You must be my little friend.” So had he 
put her to play the woman to his man. 

When Curtis came to press his suit, she saw 
only his stupidity, his blimdering, his egotism. 


124 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


There was an emptiness in her life, which he 
could never fill, and during his wooing she was 
acutely conscious of her own absolute detach- 
ment. 

Her effect on young Curtis Browne was to 
make him admire her beauty more and more, 
but to show his admiration in a very unhappy 
manner. He spent hours extolling his own 
merits, his own prowess. It was evident to 
him that for some reason he was not exactly 
shining in the warm glow of favour. This did 
not make him change his methods, it only made 
him intensify them. When in a forceful fit of 
ineffectuality, he requested that he might be 
treated as a possible future husband, Natalie 
looked at him quizzically and said, “I’ll do more. 
I’ll treat you now as if you were my husband.” 
And then she went quietly out of the room 
and shut the door gently behind her. 

Young, hopeful Mr. Ciutis Browne sat on 
the edge of his chair with an expectant ex- 
pression upon his complacent countenance. 
He was waiting for Natalie to return. The 
half-hour chimed. The hour chimed, before it 
dawned upon him, that he was at that moment 
receiving a husband’s treatment, and that 
Natalie was not coming back. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 125 

“I’ll teach her,” he muttered. “I’ll teach 
her!” 

He rang the bell. The young housemaid 
appeared. 

“WiU you ask Miss Natalie to .speak to me 
a minute?” he said. 

The young housemaid dropped her eyes. 

“Miss Natalie went out half an hour ago, 
sir,” she answered. 

Mr. Curtis Browne looked sharply at the 
young housemaid, but her eyes were fixed on 
the fioor. He could not ascertain if there was 
really an expression of amusement beneath the 
lowered eyelids. Mr. Cmtis Browne stood 
looking very grave and puzzled for a minute, 
then he went out to the hall and with dignity 
took up his hat and coat. 

Once outside, he allowed his anger to rise. 
He was a fool. She treated him as half-witted. 
He was angry for himself because her treat- 
ment of him belittled him in his own eyes, his 
own importance. Stupidity combined with ego- 
tism can kill any incipient feeling that might 
develop into love. He saw nothing of Natalie’s 
point of view; that her aunts were kind and 
good, but lacked understanding; that she had 
no sympathetic, loving ear into which to pour 


126 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


her doubts, her thoughts, her questionings of 
existenee. He was a blind man led by his own 
inclinations, and he could only be angry with 
her for her treatment of him, not with him- 
self for his own lack of understanding. Un- 
consciously, the egotistical attentions of young 
Curtis Browne were a constant reminder to her 
of that flame, that tiny light that was alive in 
her. She felt that everything in her life was 
trivial. Everything in her life was awy, ex- 
cept the inefi^ble, the mysterious ecstacy that 
Vacla drew forth from her. 

“My Mother,” explained Curtis on another 
occasion, seeing the light in Natalie’s eyes, 
“wants me to settle down and be happy. Al- 
though I say it myself, I have been a good 
son.” Thus he — not to give, but to receive. 

It was then that Natalie thought of how 
Vacla had pulled her up against his great coat 
and held her close. 


CHAPTER XIX 


On a cold morning at the end of the follow- 
ing January, a fact which had so far hidden 
itself from Natalie began to masquerade. It 
was Monday, the morning breakfast consisted 
of boiled eggs. On this particular morning 
only two eggs were on the silver egg stand. 
Suddenly, Natalie felt a conviction that this 
fact was important. 

“Have an egg. Aunt Anne,” she said lifting 
up the silver stand and handing it over to Aunt 
Anne. Aunt Anne helped herself to a silver 
egg cup, an egg and a spoon. “Have an egg. 
Aunt Clara,” said Natalie with an encouraging 
smile. 

“No, thank you,” said Aunt Clara. She put 
her hand up to her hair and gave a little pat to 
each side of her head, a gesture which she al- 
ways made when she was, what she called, 
“making a stand.” 

“But it is your favourite breakfast,” said 
Natalie quickly. “Of course you must.” 

“No,” said Aunt Clara firmly. “I must 
127 


128 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


^diet, I am getting too fat.” She took up her 
tea and sipped it. As she put the cup down 
she helped herself to a piece of toast. Natalie 
handed her the butter. 

“No, thank you,” said Aunt Clara. 

“How do you mean?” interrupted Aunt 
Anne sharply. “You are so stupid, Clara. 
You always overdo everything. Of course, you 
will take butter.” 

“Very well. Mother,” said Aunt Clara, “I 
will take butter.” 

There was a hard sound in her voice. This 
episode in itself was a trifling incident, but it 
served to turn Natalie’s thoughts a little from 
herself, and once turned she saw what she had 
not seen before. Aunt Anne was becoming 
more sardonic. Aunt Clara more patiently re- 
signed. All Aunt Anne’s little mannerisms, 
all her small exacting demands became inten- 
sified. Her life-stream seemed suddenly to 
become acid at its source. It was not only 
impossible to please her, it was impossible not 
to displease her. And as Aunt Anne’s irasci- 
bility increased. Aunt Clara’s blunt features 
gradually drooped and seemed to become 
definitely down-dropped. 

Then Natalie grasped the situation, that the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 129 


Great Aunts were worried about money. Had 
she been their own child, even a grandchild, 
they might have told her. Being but a great 
niece, the sting of this thing that worried them 
they kept to themselves. Axmt Clara, the minor 
spirit, was driven by forces. Among others 
the force of Aunt Anne’s temper. The force 
of her w illin gness to do what she could, over 
against her incapability of knowing what to do. 
About this time a new text appeared over Aunt 
Clara’s mantlepiece. It was: “No cross, no 
crown.” Its appearance coincided with a fresh 
outburst of irascibility in Aunt Anne. And 
there was a terror in aU this, the terror of taut 
nerves, of a tension strained to breaking point. 

“I can’t stay on here,” said Natalie to herself 
with a sickness at her heart. “I must make 
some excuse and go away.” She forced herself 
to try to think out some plan of action, some 
method of escape. She had read many works 
of fiction and had often imagined that for love 
a woman could easily sacrifice the world. And 
now she was ruthlessly called upon to sacrifice 
love for the apparent good of her world, her 
roof -tree, and the Great Aunts. 

She thought of Vacla. "VVhat would he feel 
when he knew? Shocked for a moment no 


130 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


doubt. But after all he might not realize that 
there was no alternative than for her to marry 
young Curtis Browne. She had come to the 
conclusion, that was her exit, marriage with 
Curtis Browne. She felt infinitely tender over 
Vacla. And she saw him piecing together the 
fragments that he would hear. Two months 
after he left, Natalie became engaged. No 
word of her reason. She could hear the tones 
of his voice saying, “My little friend didn’t stick 
to me very long.” And a sudden passionate 
fury of longing woke in her to find out his 
address and write to him, tell him, give him a 
chance to marry her if he wanted; but just as 
swiftly she turned from the thought, knowing 
that girls brought up as she was did not do 
such things. It was unjust, unjust! 

She had a strange, dream-hke sensation of 
life in those days. She was not embittered. She 
was not crush ed. She would become engaged 
to Curtis Browne, and even then something 
might happen. Strange that she had no pity 
for Curtis, no impulse of understanding what 
he might be feeling. On the other hand, she 
was very gentle with the Great Aunts. Great 
Aunt Anne’s gaze followed her many times, 
and once she remarked to her daughter: “Poor 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 131 


Edward’s girl is certainly improving, Clara.” 
That was their name for Natalie, “poor Ed- 
ward’s girl.” 

So with frost in her veins, hoping as many 
a maid has done before her, as many a maid may 
do after her, hoping that destiny would step 
into the breach before marriage became a fact, 
Natalie became engaged to Curtis Browne. 


CHAPTER XX 


CuKTis wanted to be what he thought he 
was, but he could not be. To him Natalie was 
an eiiigma. He could not make her out at all. 
Walking home accompanied by him Natalie 
smiled in the dark and thrust her hands deep 
into the pockets of her coat. He had given her 
an expensive ring. He had paraded her before 
his family. He was prepared to establish her 
in a house with all modem improvements in 
an expensive neighbourhood. He had, so to 
speak, accomplished his performance, what 
could any girl want more? 

And yet there is temperament, there is emo- 
tion, there is understanding. They explained, 
or might have explained, the touch of bitterness 
in Natahe’s voice; a momentary bitterness, that 
came and went apparently without reason, at 
least to Curtis. 'vHis egQtjan struck her so un- 
pleasantly. It evoked a frown which kept in 
its place, and from under it her eyes stared 
wistfully. And the frown marred a little the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 133 


effect of her romantic eyes, her white skin, her 
thick wavy hair. 

If Curtis had been older, he might have im- 
derstood. As it was he did not understand. 
The frown was not a flying signal to him, that 
all was not well. It was merely something con- 
trary to the direct wishes of a superior young 
man, who had in his own estimation complied 
with all the necessary requirements of life. 

And so between these two there was not only 
lack of understanding, there was no real regard. 

Better far, Natalie thought, Vacla’s cruel 
neglect, combined with Vacla’s love of the real 
woman in her, the hidden woman, that only he 
knew, than these assiduous daily attentions to 
someone who was not she at all. 

And Curtis, on the other hand, felt the jolts 
going badly. He thought himself a fine fellow, 
a fair fellow, and yet never a day but Natahe 
made him feel that she thought he had somehow 
failed. 

The birth-gods who handed out to Mr. Curtis 
Browne his equipment of temperament, of 
nature, of disposition, must have congratulated 
themselves in those days upon their gift of a 
very thick skin, because although he sensed 
something critical, hostile, he did not see it. 


134 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


The danger to Natalie from her side lay in 
that he might wake up and see it. The real 
danger lay in the effect that outside forces were 
having upon her natm-e, her disposition. Vacla 
had wakened her woman’s heart, and her quick- 
ened intellect saw that duty seemed driving her 
in the wrong direction. 

Aunt Clara found herself wondering about 
her niece. 

“Do you think that Natalie is happy. 
Mother?” she asked timidly. 

Aunt Anne looked at her narrowly. “What 
makes you ask that, Clara?” 

“I don’t know. Being engaged, I supposed 
she ought to be quite radiant. I have thought 
her cheeks were losing their color lately.” 

“You are a silly old thing, Clara. Girls are 
always like that.” There was an undertone of 
vexation in her voice. 

But that evening when Aunt Clara had gone 
upstairs to bed, Aunt Anne followed Natalie 
with her eyes as she went about the room, doing 
the little duties that the avmts had taught her. 
Putting the chairs back in their places, smooth- 
ing the chintz, beating up the cushions, and 
when she saw that Natalie was looking at her, 
too, she said; 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 135 


“You are quite happy, child, aren’t you?” 

Natalie laughed, a nervous little laugh, rather 
mirthless. 

“Of course I am, dear. I have this nice ring, 
and I am going to have pretty clothes, and a 
lovely house; of com*se I am happy.” 

“That is quite right,” said Aimt Anne 
abruptly. “A young girl does not always know 
what is best for her, but I think you have chosen 
wisely, very wisely. And I am sure that when 
you have come to years of discretion you will 
think so yourself.” 

“The wedding?” 

“Curtis wants it in June, Aunt Anne. That 
is when he goes on his business trip, and he 
thought it might be wise to combine it with a 
wedding trip, and as he says ‘kill two birds with 
one stone.’ ” As she said this, there was the 
touch of bitterness in her voice. 

“That will be quite all right. The June 
flowers are always so pretty.” 

Memory swayed in Aunt Anne’s voice 
languidly, as water sways at night in calm 
weather. Mysterious lights upon a forgotten 
shore; ships afloat in forgotten harbours, when 
woman reminds herself of the days that are 


136 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


gone. Then an expression of practical to-day 
superseded the moment. 

“You may tell Curtis that you have my per- 
mission to be married in June.” 

A faint colour rose in Natalie’s cheeks. 

“Something may happen before June,” she 
said abruptly. Aunt Anne looked at her side- 
ways. 

“Nothing will happen, child,” she said. 


CHAPTER XXI 


ViNEVAE sat by the open window in the 
library of his country house listening to the 
boom of the waves breaking upon the beach. 
His little burning eyes glanced from the rug 
over his knees out to the soxmd that had caught 
hold of his imagination, as though out there lay 
those old ambitions and hopes forever haimting, 
forever hovering. His burning eyes were upon 
the distance as if for the moment he felt the 
necessity to escape from the resolute grasp of 
life. It was an imagination going from the 
hght of day on a long dark journey, as through 
the open window came the unrestful cry of the 
sea, the throbbing and breaking of the ground 
swell of the ocean. And his imagination went 
forth to the soimd of distant music in which 
the world seemed drowned. 

He saw again a narrow street in Frankfort 
and a small boy in threadbare clothes, walking 
quickly, that he might not meet other boys of 
his acquaintance, but getting home from school 
as rapidly and as imobtrusively as he could 
137 


138 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


with his heavj’- pile of books. He saw this boy 
standing in the prow of a vessel with a few 
bundles wrapped in cloths and handkerchiefs, 
holding his cap in his hand as the breeze blew 
to meet him from America. He saw Hester 
Street. He saw Wall Street. He saw the rail- 
way from Cairo, the throngs of natives as- 
sembled to bid farewell to the Pilgrims who 
were departing to worship at the Holy Places. 
He saw the land that his people were reclaim- 
ing for their own. He saw the sheep kraals, the 
veldt and the kaffir huts. He saw the “Bourse 
the Kremlin at Moscow; the breaking of the 
roof in Russia and the hurling of the first pro- 
jectiles of the revolution. Back to the earth 
went his imagination, and he saw the brown 
seed and then the living thing starting upwards. 
The brown seed with the germ of life, the dy- 
namic force to push itself upward to the light. 
The atmosphere that the young life first meets 
leaves its impression, will not, in fact, leave it 
in a day. So Vinevar as he looked back across 
the past with his little burning eyes, reviewed 
the different scenes of his life of incident and 
much change. 

You may divert the course of a river, but the 
water will find an outlet somewhere, and a seed 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 139 


that is dropped in the earth will push upward 
to the light. 

The curse of this great gift of travel, of 
having lived and sojourned in many coimtries, 
is that a man ceasing to have one country, be- 
comes as it were a “deracine,” and his imper- 
sonahty becomes too realr”l5o with a divination, 
that drew from memory as he sat looking over 
the sea, he could summon at a glance pictures 
of the different countries in which he had so- 
journed. Vinevar had the world in his vest 
pocket. On the eve of 1922, when loans were 
being called in by the banks, Vinevar was ready 
to lend money to the nations, the money he had 
taken from them when they were at war. He 
was already a copper king, he was at present 
seeking control of the cotton lands. He knew, 
none better, the commercial rivalry of Japan 
and America, and knowing that Japan had got 
control of the silk industry, he set himself to 
make sure of cotton. 

This day as he sat meditating, if one could 
have seen in his eyes what he was thinking, one 
would have seen his realization of the futility of 
the gifts for which he had fought. 

There was a bird who did not like his cage, or 
his seed or his sugar; then why not open the 


140 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


door and let him fly away to the forest? But 
when the door was opened, habit kept the bird 
on his perch. The taste for freedom had gone. 
And so he contented his soul with a few old 
thoughts, that he thought over and over again — 
The power to feel, the power to love, the power 
to crave, to shudder with jealousy, are powers 
that die with disuse. One cannot go to the 
forest when one has lived in a cage too long. 

In the colonization of new countries the gov- 
ernments press for what will become loyal 
citizens, and yet the artificial outcome of trans- 
planting remains a problem. Will the little 
Vinevar, scorned by the httle German boys, 
bring his starved love of coimtry to a growth 
when he becomes an American citizen? No. In 
every outward act of hfe he may be loyal, but 
just as a bulb sometimes puts forth roots, that 
become blinded by lack of water, and their 
growth arrested, the patriotism of little Vinevar 
may be stultified in the same way. The starv- 
ing Russians, the ill-treated Poles, those flying 
from some open bleeding wrong in the country 
of their birth will never become America’s best 
eitizens. The seed that should have blown to 
flower has died. And yet pity them. The 
meaning of life to them is very close to the dust, 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 141 


their final attitude a question mark. The charm 
of life is bound to fade out for them, as the 
grace of youth fades out of their faces. Man’s 
first duty, his choice between the world and 
something which is beyond the world, deter- 
mines any chance of happiness that he may 
have. The second duty and privilege of every 
man is to serve his country. In this he escapes 
from material reality into an ideal. He rises 
above the dust. He goes beyond to a very fine 
emotion. 

The actions of loyalty and service are definite 
and may be performed, but the emotions of 
patriotism are an incalculable element. Emi- 
gration, the plant food of the new civilization 
of America, — emigration, the stream that flings 
itself upon the grey foam of the sea, brings to 
the new land many blinded tendrils of wounded 
patriotism. In the fertile black soil of some 
virgin furrow new shoots may come, but the 
blinded roots seldom grow again. The emi- 
grants, the uprooted ones, the step-children of 
the nation, if they lack the fine quality of 
patriotism do not condemn them, pity them. 
They are what their lives have made them. 

A girl came into the room. As she ap- 
proached Vinevar, she touched certain objects 


142 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


on her way, but she walked unerringly straight 
in his direction. Her hands slipped over the 
arms of his chair. Her light fingers touched 
his cheek and passed over his forehead. 

“Your brow is furrowed. Father, what are 
you thinking of?” 

“Restless futility, little one,” he answered, 
“restless futility.” 

“Fie, Father, fie, when you own the cotton 
lands, we will have a plantation and in the 
evening we will hear the negroes singing.” 

Vinevar looked at the hand lying on his 
shoulder. 

“How can you tell when it is evening?” 

“I tell like this. In the morning the air 
strikes my face like this,” she pressed her little 
fingers on Vinevar’s cheek. “And in the eve- 
ning the air comes so.” She barely touches his 
cheek with the tips of her fingers. “That is 
why I like the sound of singing in the evening, 
it holds off a little as if it were shy. Don’t be 
pessimistic, Father.” 

“Futility, little one. Futility.” 

The young girl nodded. “You mean me. 
And yet all flowers have a scent for me. I can 
put my finger in their little cups and feel the 
pistils and the stamens. And you can never 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


143 


hear the tunes I can. Life is delicious, Father, 
quite delicious.” 

Vinevar sighed. 

His daughter was blind and the priceless 
treasures he had bought with his great wealth, 
she would never see. 


CHAPTER XXII 


During this time Vacla’s days were busy 
with organization. Days drifted away and he 
had to lose himself in activity. There was some- 
thing that did not rest in him; something that 
pushed on for further achievement; the endless 
fascination to try, to see whether the thin ice 
would bear. There was a part of him, too, that 
life was changing. He would do what he 
planned. The ice would hold and he would go 
on. And yet — had he lost his power? The 
thought haunted him. There were those mo- 
ments in life that halted before the stream ran 
on, reached out further. So he talked with 
himself. 

He felt a revulsion. Since his failure with 
the particular mission on which Isaacson had 
sent him, it seemed there were mysterious 
things over which he had no control, moments 
when the functions did not “functionize” — a 
word he coined and wrote on his cuff. 

“You are stale,” said Isaacson watching 
closely. 


144 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 145 


To himself for the first time Vacla doubted. 
Aloud he said, “What does a man do who has 
become stale? How does he recover his fresh- 
ness?” 

“Regime of healthful exercise, food, and a 
/training up of the body,” replied Isaacson. 
^ “The body has its influence. Life is a flat sur- 
{ face. The surface must be kept highly pol- 
( ished,” Such were his hints and on them Vacla 
acted. 

He rose at six, took two glasses of cold 
water, got into soft woollen clothes, and walked 
at a quick pace to the Park where he ran for 
two miles. He returned to his apartment, took 
a cold bath and breakfasted on coffee, boiled 
eggs and toast. The two jerseys he wore when 
exercising, by increasing his temperature, 
helped to reduce his weight. 

After two weeks of this he found himself 
more alive, more fit to attack his business ap- 
pointments. He had not to work himself up 
to a point of enthusiasm after he entered a 
man’s ofiice. He arrived at a point of en- 
thusiasm. Vacla had saved a name on Isaac- 
son’s list to attack later. It was a name to 
conjure with. The moment it was mentioned, 
jnen saw Trust Companies, Savings Banks, 


146 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Continental Railway Lines, Equipment Com- 
panies, Copper Mines, and Steel Bridges. It 
was a name like a wand that drew from the 
darkness all these things. 

“A great man,” thought Vacla. “I’ll try for 
him.” And with a quiet smile he betook him- 
self to the appointment. 

The great man sat back in his chair, the tips 
of his right fingers resting upon the tips of his 
left, his elbows resting upon the arm of his 
chair, his back resting against a leather cushion. 
His attitude was attentive but non-committal. 
The scene represented a trying out of person- 
alities. 

Vacla began with a good speech, explana- 
tory, optimistic. He spoke simply. The great 
man listened without any show of interest. 
This stiffened Vacla. 

“Unless I make good, they will throw me 
over,” he thought. 

He dug his spurs deep into his Pegasus. He 
had a flash of insight. He knew the great man 
to have the greatest collection of Rembrandts 
in America. 

“The financiers of the New World are ar- 
tists,” Vacla suggested. “Though they do not 
draw with pencil on paper, they draw with 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 14^- 


steel on the rock surface.” The great man’s 
eyes flickered. 

“They create,” continued Vacla, “they create 
their silver points, their pictures of their own. 
They divert the stream of humanity. They 
destroy old things, but they create new ones. 
They lay railways from east to west on shining 
steel, their silver points. They write and talk 
their pictures ; many methods on a grand scale. 
The Socialist says the world is for all. The 
Financier knows it is for him alone. He makes 
his mark in silver point from east to west. The 
Socialist spreads the revolution. And with the 
rabble the Financier creates.” 

The great man looked up. Vacla had caught 
his attention. 

“How much do you want?” 

“Half a milhon.” 

“Ten year bonds.” 

“Gold bonds,” replied Vacla with a smile. 

“Put the dates of payment on paper, together 
with the details you have just made known 
to me.” 

The great man smiled. He was known in 
Wall Street' as the optimist. He appeared in 
the familiar cartoons with a roimded waist line 
and an infectious smile. 


148 THE CAPTIVE HERO 


“My railways, silver points,” he said. “We 
create.” He took a gold case out of his pocket 
and pulling out a card he wrote something on it. 

“This is my address. Come and see me to- 
morrow at five o’clock and I will show you my 
Rembrandts.” 

Vacla walked down Wall Street on air. The 
old tricks did not fail. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


What is the grand prize of the inner life? 
Who wins it? By what means is it won? Go 
to Shakespeare for your answer and he wiU teU 
you, “Will is unquestioned King.” Mental dis- 
cipline and perfect self-control had so far been 
Vacla’s. Whenever anything stood in the way 
of his personal advancement, his will had 
|tepped in to brush it aside, to summon what- 
ever force could vanquish it, to vanquish any 
temptation, to allow some softer influence to 
summon the deeper instincts of his masculine 
nature. 

Probably the last time that his will-power 
was unimpaired was in his interview with the 
Great Man. His will had so far held its sway 
over weakness, it now became true to him when 
he began to contend against goodness. 

Life had become to him a ridiculous little 
kitchen-garden, in that his idea was, that his 
days on earth must produce a result. He 
thought of the high salary that made him sat- 
isfied to have worked. He lost sight of the 
149 


150 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


satisfaction he might have taken in the work 
itself. Industry did not operate with him, it 
operated against him. His natural bonhomie 
was weeded out. His sole interest became the 
kitchen-garden of money for money’s sake. He 
drew upon his magnificent reserve of life and 
turned it into cash. Twenty-five per cent of 
the population of the United States is doing 
this, and that is putting it at a low figime. 
When one says the poisonous science of money- 
getting is laying low an immense field of little 
flowers, exhausting the energy of a quarter of 
the nation, one is not exaggerating. To keep 
a roof over one’s head, to keep life in the body 
is necessary, but the manner of doing them, 
the style is the man. With money-getting a 
continuous phenomenon, man ceases to be his 
better self. The human group loses its power 
of cohesion. Disintegration propagates the 
deification of the individual, and before long 
he lives only to himself. The human group 
loses its power of cohesion. 

It was in this spirit that Vacla planned an- 
other coup, a big coup to enrich himself quickly, 
a traitor’s coup. He planned to give Vinevar’s 
plans away to Vinevar’s enemies. His ideas 
were stripped bare of illusions. He argued to 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 151 


himself that all ideas are common property. 
Here, then, in the mere verbahsm he gave 
himself absolution. Excuses become the first 
language of the transgressor. 

It seems that the network of the human con- 
science contributes to the efficiency of the gen- 
eral individual mechanism. Vacla brushed this 
aside. He planned to betray his employer, yet 
met him with as confident a smile. He disre- 
garded the possible trembling of some nerve, 
set vibrating by his deep unconsciousness and 
not subjugate to will-power. 

“I am warm,” says the man smihng, and 
shakes you with a freezing hand. When the 
tempter takes the Hungry City, there must 
be mutiny within. One of the greatest dramas 
of life remains to be written, the drama that 
shows the decline of a good man from one 
wrong act. If a dog wishes to bite, he curves 
his lips and shows his teeth, but when a man 
approaches with a smile to bury his teeth in 
human flesh and bite, he is embarked upon a 
moral downfall. 

“I must be secure,” Vacla said. And he 
embarked with insecure methods at a headlong 
and dangerous pace. He was not sure how his 
demands would be realized. Honour became a 


t 


152 THE CAPTIVE HERD 

sleeping Ariadne, his goal was an artificial 
heaven. Vinevar he planned to sell to Japan. 
So his longing for security, for independence 
at this immoral pace was bound to deliver him 
into bondage; the bondage of the ever-present 
thought of a mean action; a sulphiu'ous phan- 
tom forever mocking from the fire; the bond- 
age of the knowledge of having betrayed a 
trust. 

Said Vinevar: “With my reservoir of great 
wealth, I will establish a great monopoly of 
cotton. With the genius of my distinguished 
mind, I will raise the price of cotton in such 
a manner that only my agents will benefit. 
Neither the retailer, nor the producer, but my 
agents. In this way I shall force the cotton 
producer off the land.” 

Said Vacla, flushed with success, his judg- 
ment distorted by his greed for wealth: “Japan 
controls the silk industry in the United States. 
In his longing to compete for American trade, 
he wants to control cotton. I will sell Vinevar’s 
secret to Japan at a high figure, and become 
rich.” ! 


CHAPTER XXIV 


Now Vinevar’s great scheme was on this 
wise. 

He hoped for his own people world gov- 
ernment. ^Vhen he gave the password All- 
Judaan to Isaacson, he thought of a state 
controlling aU the governments of the world, a 
state whose citizens were unconditionally loyal, 
wherever they might be and whether rich or 
poor; a nation living among other nations, 
participating in their financial and industrial 
enterprises, yet remaining ever separate. 

When Isaacson sat smoking in the evening, 
he pictured a perfect Palestine, the throne of 
David restored, the separate people at home at 
last. Not so Vinevar. In six months, he would 
have wearied of lending his money at three per 
cent and gone down to Egypt to procure ten 
per cent. The will to mastery was strong in 
Vinevar, the will to conquer, the will to hold. 
Isaacson was a Mazzini dreaming of Liberty. 
Vinevar saw a perpetual bondage greater than 
Liberty herself. 


154 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, a 
man of genius, of loyalty to the country of his 
adoption, and of great foresight, once made 
the cryptic remark, “Every country gets the 
Jew it deserves.” A fact obscure, perhaps, but 
certain. 

Vinevar, the international financier, was a 
great man. His customers were nations. The 
world was his table and the control of the imi- 
verse his stakes. And yet these things alone 
did not make him great. What made him 
greater than Isaacson, greater than Vacla, was 
that Vinevar worked for the ultimate su- 
premacy, not of his own fortune, but of his own 
people. And with that motive behind him he 
added to ordinary life something, and watch- 
ing him one grew to believe in an afterglow of 
grandeur. Life drew an element of deeper 
gravity. And the immensity of his purpose 
raised the curtain from the stage. He was a 
man to whom the great affections of persons 
to each other meant nothing. His genius was 
swayed only by the thought of material power 
vested in the hands of his race. He had no 
outbreaks of the spirit. Amid the mysterious 
charts of life, he turned neither to the right 
hand, nor to the left. He heard only one voice, 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 155 


and that voice was the voice of the cause of 
Israel. He was not a capitalist interested in 
his labom’ers. He cared nothing for his labour- 
ers, he cared only for his cause. Life was a 
stream of humanity pom’ing across' the world. 
The individuals went on over the horizon. The 
stream was fed by new forms of life. For 
the moment he was a cattle-driver, directing the 
stream across the earth. At the last he too 
would go with the stream. 

Youth goes. The first wild ardour of the 
spirit goes. To the writer, to the poet, youth 
is the enchanted period, the day of divinity. 
But Vinevar had never been young. Even in 
Frankfort as a little boy Vinevar was not 
yoimg. He was old with the experience of his 
race. And having never been young, as he 
grew old the thing for which he lived had come 
to life, so to his friends he seemed younger. His 
brnming eyes drew forth their arguments. Life 
did not disquiet him. He knew it for what it 
was worth. He played the revolution for per- 
sonal power. 

“Things pass. Men pass. Men and women 
drift down the ages,” so said Vinevar watching 
the stream of humanity drift over the edge of 
the world. He knew that life was in its essence 


156 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


what he chose to make it. And he drew near 
to its uncertain moods, bringing to its bitter- 
ness his own knowledge of its futility and the 
meaning of its sorrow. Vinevar and life had 
nothing left to find out about each other. His 
aim was to serve his race, no more, no less. He 
bore to existence no illusion. Subtly, silently 
the treatment of his early days had gnawed at 
his nature, until hate had blinded him to aU the 
sweetness of human companionship. He had 
been brought to bitterness by what ought to 
have been good and gentle and humane, and 
the memory of this bringing walked with him 
until in his soul was the scorn of all the world. 

He walked as it were in prison dress. The 
moon and the stars had become darkened. 
Across the night he saw an immense blackness 
through which his soul would one day go alone. 

In the meantime Vinevar, a Prince of Israel, 
served his people. 


CHAPTER XXV 


As he prepared to sell Vinevar to the Jap- 
anese, Vacla felt a kind of sympathy stirring 
in him for both sides. These small men from 
the Orient come to get concessions from the 
West brought with them a whiff of the far 
Eastern environment. 

Entering the swing door of the Rex Hotel, 
where the envoys from Japan were staying, 
Vacla realised that this was already the third 
interview. It struck him suddenly as he stood 
waiting for the lift, that the man standing to 
the right of him he had seen more than once 
lately. Checking this fancy, he waited for the 
car to come down. Two cars came from the 
lower floor at the same time. Vacla moved 
as though he would go into the nearest, then 
passed on to the other which was almost full, 
entered it, heard the starter say, “Take the next 
car, please,” and saw the gentleman in the 
tweed cap being shut out by the iron grating. 
Vacla sniffed, it looked as though the man were 
following him. 


157 


158 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Vacla got oif at the fourteenth floor and 
went straight to the rooms occupied by the 
Japanese. 

Downstairs the man in the tweed cap waited 
for the return of the car. When it returned he 
approached the hft boy and asked him whether 
he remembered at what floor he had left the 
young gentleman with the brown overcoat and 
soft brown hat. The lift boy hesitated. The 
man with the tweed cap crossed his palm with 
silver, then the rascal grasped the situation. 

“Eleventh floor, sir,” he said. He put the 
man with the tweed cap off at the eleventh 
floor, where he waited at a point to command 
both elevators for two hours. 

During those two hours Vacla had been bar- 
gaining steadily. He had held over the little 
men from the East the menace of China. He 
quoted: “If China adopts Western industrial 
methods she will be able to underbid you in all 
the markets of the world.” He with the art 
of perfect salesmanship summoned to their 
memories the remembrance of cherry-trees in 
spring, the shimmering of fire-flies on summer 
nights, the crimsoning of maples in the autumn, 
just as though fragments of the Orient were 
brought over seas before their eyes. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 159 


There was a look in Vacla’s eyes as he talked 
almost as of one forced to believe in the Karma 
of Japan in spite of himself. Skilfully without 
appearing to do so he brought his hearers to 
see in imagination what the control of another 
raw material might mean to Japan. He took 
this as the fundamental wish, as the basic cause 
of selling the secret, what had already been 
done in the matter of complete ownership. 
Then the soul of the Japanese which is a com- 
pound went back to the blossoming of the 
cherry trees, and his imagination amplified as 
it were until he was ready to raise his bid. 

And this thing in Vacla that governed him 
so completely, this thing so arbitrary that it was 
determined to have its way even to the point 
of making him forget that the son of Wynd- 
ham of Winchester should have been a man of 
honour, drove him to put his scruples aside. It 
drove him to forget ever 3 rthing except that he 
must have money, much money very quickly. 
He must heap up money, dedicate himself to be 
a man in the chains of wealth. His love of 
beauty, his love of harmonious sound, his love 
of adventure, his love of romance, of all the 
sweet intriguing things of life, were being 
dragged down like some light craft that is 


160 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


pulled below the surface of the water by a hand 
from the lower depths. 

After long hesitation the Oriental intimated 
to him that if he could put Japan in possession 
of a train of facts necessary to obtain control 
of the cotton market, Japan would be willing 
to repay him in terms acceptable to him. 

The mutual dislike of the Oriental and the 
Occidental was apparent in the interview. The 
compromise of Japan, which knows that it 
must conciliate and come to terms vmtil it is 
able to do without the foreigner, was also 
apparent. 

With the seeing eyes of the Far East, Japan 
watches the markets of the Occident. She takes 
their range of vision. She sees the huge 
monstrosities of architecture necessary for 
Western trade, its enormous enveloping capital, 
and she knows that with almost no capital, in 
houses, that take sometimes only three days to 
build, she has laid the foundations of a trade 
that America dare not ignore. The Japanese 
skilled labomer is able to underbid any Western 
artisan in the same line of industry. Without 
impedimenta he comes, and this gives him a 
tremendous advantage in the struggle for life. 

Vacla went out from the interview satisfied 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 161 


with himself and with his prospects, but 
mingled with his hard lack of scruple, his bold- 
ness that was smooth and polished, was a naive 
crudity, which was in its lack of covering its 
tracks startlingly like the ostrich, that bimies 
his head in the sand. 

Would the glory of his ostrich feathers be- 
tray him? 


CHAPTER XXVI 


In a very able biography, lengthy as to six 
volumes, it has been said of the central figure, 
himself a Jew, that Will is the distinctive char- 
acteristic of the Jewish race. This biography 
points out that highly developed will-power 
tends to dwarf the imagination ; that will 
sweeps on its object and makes for success; 
that the brooding temperament that is essential 
to high imagination makes for ineffectiveness 
and dispersion of will-power. Combine the 
two, will-power and imagination, and you have 
a man of genius. 

Vinevar had the will-power of his race, but 
he had also in a great degree the quality of 
imagination. With a penetrating vision he 
tried for picturesque achievement. In a prac- 
tical spirit he worked at practical things keep- 
ing in his mind the waving lihes of some 
halcyon dream. His life was a romance born 
out of a tragedy. 

At the moment of his seeking for an inter- 
view with Isaacson, the old ambitions were rife 
162 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 163 

in him to this extent, that whatsoever he put 
his hand to, that he did with all his might. He 
stood for a moment; then he sat down on a 
high chair. 

“Isaacson,” he said. 

“Well, Vinevar?” 

“The fact that cotton is not scarce, but that 
its price is being artificially raised, has become 
known.” 

“Known?” 

“Yes, known to those who would work 
against us.” 

Isaacson said nothing, and Vinevar re- 
sumed : 

“It has made me think something though, 
Isaacson. It has made me think that perhaps 
Melfort is not playing square.” 

He leaned forward and as he did so, Isaac- 
son’s mind went to Vacla and he remembered 
exactly his own suspicions, that Vacla had fore- 
stalled him in buying the grocery store. 

“I don’t think I really knew it before,” said 
Isaacson slowly. “I am sure I didn’t know it, 
but I have had a suspicion. Bruns arranged 
for Melfort to be followed.” 

Again he looked at Vinevar. Vinevar’s fer- 
vent and ambitious dream was rising in him. 


164 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


It appeared in His face, like the reflection of a 
gold-fish swimming below the surface of the 
water, a bright thought lightening for a mo- 
ment the weariness of Vinevar’s features. 
Isaacson following the Zionist movement, 
slavishly at one with it, never knew for what 
Vinevar was working. The more simple Isaac- 
son could not consider that the rich Jews are 
hostUe to an idea which would take them from 
their positions of comfort and luxury. Vinevar 
knew that in the palaces of the wealthiest Jews 
are not found many Hebrew guests. So al- 
ways the ultimate object of Vinevar’s plans 
was incomprehensible to Isaacson. 

Vinevar’s glowing eyes fixed themselves 
upon Isaacson, and tried to read his thoughts. 

“What has Bruns reported?” he asked. 

Isaacson started. 

“Nothing. I have been able to trace the 
reason of every visit Melfort has paid, except 
three visits to the Rex Hotel.” 

“I think you count too much on human 
nature, Isaacson,” Vinevar said. “I beheve it 
is a mistake to count upon human beings,” he 
added. “One never knows what is going to 
happen.” 

“One must believe, a little,” Isaacson replied. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 165 


“It all passes away so fast. I think one must 
believe in people. If one cannot take happi- 
ness and enjoy it, one must believe in people. 
Study people, but believe in them.” 

“And having studied,” said Vinevar, “you 
will find that the reason of our wealth and 
power is our wonderful fitness in the face of 
heavy odds for the battle of hfe. The nations 
that are being destroyed by us deserve to be 
destroyed. Their weakness, self-indulgence, 
stupidity, want of proper education are the 
real reasons why we spring to office in high 
places. There are some races against whom 
we are powerless to act. 

“For instance?” 

“The Scotch.” 

“With our hand always on the pulse of pub- 
lic opinion, we know into what waters we must 
cast our hne. We do not bite a file. Our suc- 
cess in Russia is due to the weakness of the 
Russian people. This young man, by the way, 
Vacla, is he not Russian?” 

“His mother was Russian.” 

“This yoimg man with a paltry, unmeaning 
outlook. Ah yes!” he interrupted Isaacson’s 
would-be interruption, “I know he has a good 
manner. A good manner only. It is a pretty 


166 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


flower pot without a flower. But I tell you he 
is paltry, working to have wealth. What does 
he know of the deep silence of the waste places ; 
of the vast slopes of daily life ; of the desolation 
of an unyielding fate? And yet this paltry 
man cuts across my path, I, who hold the 
thrones of Europe in my pay. I, who have 
worked to make New York the gateway of the 
great tax-gatherers. I, who with my moving 
pictures have formed pubhc opinion from Cali- 
fornia to Sandy Hook. How comes it that this 
upstart dares to think independently of me?” 

Vinevar twitched on his chair like a man 
supremely irritated. “The best people and the 
best things are never appreciated,” said Isaac- 
son. 

“Appreciated!” Vinevar forced a kind of 
laugh. “Appreciated! A man who sees be- 
yond to-day, who sees the responsibility of one 
generation to another. A prophet seeing in 
the fiery furnace of memory the forms of those 
who have prophesied before. A prophet seeing 
the isolation and advancement of his race being 
accomplished among the nations, seeing that 
out of hardship and discipline have come en- 
durance and the will to conquer. A man with 
no thought except the advancement of the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 167 


ideas, that experience has shown him to be for 
the good of those to whom he belongs — do you 
think such a man is ever appreciated, Isaacson? 
Great God of Russia, Isaacson, not in this 
world, never!” 

“You are jumping at conclusions,” Isaacson 
said slowly. “We really are not sxire that Mel- 
fort has been the means by which information 
has become known.” 

In spite of himself, he felt he was not con- 
vincing Vinevar. Isaacson the Zionist, the 
man of talent felt in Vinevar, the man of 
genius, depths that he could not fathom. He 
knew that Vinevar was often influenced, car- 
ried away by his one weakness, a weakness 
characteristic of his race, the spirit of boastful- 
ness. Now he had no doubt that probably he 
had boasted of his power and enterprise to 
Vacla, boasted in a manner to betray facts. 
Influenced by his natural kindliness, he tried 
to pour oil on the troubled waters. 

“Vinevar,” he said very gently, “if you 
should find anything wrong, you will spare 
Vacla. You will, of course, take precautions 
to protect your own interests, but you shall 
spare Vacla? You won’t be too hard on him.” 

“Spare him?” said Vinevar indignantly. 


168 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“Why should I spare him? I, whom life has 
never spared.” The fierceness of his anger 
almost choked him. “Spare him? I, who have 
struggled against unpopularity and the brutal 
ignorance of public opinion. No. No. The 
work of long years cannot be imdone in a day. 
No, Isaacson, Vinevar would not spare even 
his own son!” 

A smile that had no brightness in it, a smile 
that was merely cynicism, flickered over his 
face. 

“Tell Bruns he must watch Melfort, and re- 
port to you all his actions significant, and also 
those seemingly insignificant. Truly, Isaac- 
son,! said wisely when I said to you not to trust 
human beings. He is a clever beggar. One 
cannot bring a man to law for merely betray- 
ing a trust, giving away information. And the 
inadequacy of the law makes us all law-givers, 
meters of justice. Many incidents in life are 
the results of accident, trust or non-trust 
among others, but the main drift of life is not 
the result of accident, it is the result of pur- 
pose. It would be a sentimental triumph if 
we could leave the doors of our houses un- 
locked, if we could have faith in universal 
goodness and trust our fellow-man. Only the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 169 


world would not exist. The world of the emo- 
tions, in which I forgive my son, and the world 
of fact in which he reaps at my hands that 
which he has sown, are two different hemi- 
spheres. Their courses converge, but never 
meet. Life gives knowledge. The wise man 
learns his own route. And forgiveness and 
Vinevar are hke oil and water, they do not 
mingle, they do not mingle.” 

Vinevar rose, placed his hat on his head, took 
his gloves in his left hand, and balancing his 
gold-headed cane in his right hand, he made 
his way to the door. 

“Good-bye, Isaacson. I am what life has 
made me, and what I am I shall remain.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 


Vacla the unfearful was afraid of the 
shadows; the voices of shadows mingling with 
the light. And it was with a shock, the shock 
of a big gun fired suddenly within a few yards 
of him, that he became aware that he was being 
constantly and persistently followed. The dis- 
ciple of Mr. Bruns was assiduous in the ex- 
treme. 

Moreover, business had staged in his regard 
another tragedy. A man, whom after his in- 
terview Vacla had called “trumpery” had re- 
fused to subscribe; and then another, and 
another, and another, and another. Five in all 
successively. He was caught in the moment 
by a run of bad luck. Had he continued to 
bring large subscriptions to the firm, indul- 
gence might have been extended, but again he 
was unsuccessful, and his functions would not 
functionize. To some occult change of the 
forces of fortune he always attributed the com- 
plete reversal of his luck. For as long as he 
could he was prepared to evade it. He tried 
170 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 171 


to persuade himself that it was only a moment- 
ary interruption to success ; and it was not until 
long after that he began to realize that his 
failure to procure large loans and his failure 
to be loyal to Vinevar and Isaacson, were not 
two separate things, but were, in fact, two 
things whose pieces were inextricably entangled 
the one with the other. 

For all his anxiety at this time, at times he 
enjoyed himself. He formed the habit of go- 
ing to the theatre in the evenings, as he found 
himself too restless to sit at home. He liked 
to sit in the darkened theatre and allow the 
thoughts let loose by the actors to take posses- 
sion of him. The spell of the theatre was par- 
ticularly strong for him. He liked to read on 
his programme the names of “The Cast,” the 
setting of “The Acts,” and know that in three 
hours’ time, if the dramatist had done well, the 
secrets of these characters would be known to 
him. 

There was one play running in New York at 
this time that particularly interested him. In 
it a woman, young no longer in either experi- 
ence or years, returns with the man with whom 
she had years ago run away, and lays bare for 
the audience some of her thoughts and emo- 


172 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


tions, the things that love has been able to keep 
from her, and those things that love had not. 
Two promising people, she and he, who had 
wrecked the chances of their careers for each 
other. And again she asks herself before the 
audience if the question were put in her hands 
in the same circumstances with the years 
turned back, how would she deal with it? And 
turning to her companion, the man who might 
have been Prime Minister, but for his love for 
her, she waits for his opinion, whether it is 
better to go for love, or to stay without it. 
Whether the evenings spent with him on the 
Grand Canal in Venice were worth the averted 
faces of her fellow country-women in the morn- 
ing. And he, her companion, the man who 
might have been Prime Minister, but who spent 
his life knocking about from one watering-place 
to another, because he could not take her back 
to England, he answers : “It is not what a man 
does in life that matters, it is what he is.” 

Those words, that were spoken by the actor 
with such conviction, stuck in Vacla’s mind, 
leaving the impression, the wrong, but wished- 
for impression, that if he were strong enough 
always to be in the saddle, as it were, he could 
travel as he chose. 


\ 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 173 


Then Ebbing, the old Doctor, his Uncle 
Nathan’s friend, being in New York for a 
medical conference, came to dine with him, and 
somehow upset that conviction. 

Across his own table Vacla looked at his 
guest, reahzing that this gentle, genial, old- 
fashioned man was content to do day after day, 
not even iconoclastic operations, but to admin- 
ister the simple advice of heahng. 

“Certain diseases,” the old Doctor was say- 
ing, “certain diseases of the mind as well as of 
the body stamp themselves unmistakably upon 
the face of the patient, and the mind affects the 
body more than we guess.” 

The old Doctor looked at Vacla, not a 
searching glance, not scrutinisingly, but hght- 
ly, the glance of one so accustomed to all the 
phases of life, that only a glance is necessary, 
then with his eyehds lowered as he cracked the 
walnuts on his plate, he told this tale; 

“I had luncheon to-day with an old col- 
league, a man who has made for himself a most 
enviable place in the successful treatment of 
psychological disease. He told me the inci- 
dents of one of his recent cases. It appears 
that the sufferer in this case was a bond broker 
in Wall Street, extraordinarily successful in 


174 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


his profession until about a year ago, when he 
suddenly found his previously successful meth- 
ods impaired. After suffering severe mental 
depression for some time, he consulted my 
friend the psychologist, presumably thinking 
that some physical infirmity must be under- 
mining his state of health. Now in the cases of 
his mentally disturbed patients, my friend al- 
ways seeks to gain their confidence. He tries 
to get them to tell him what it is that they have 
on their minds, knowing that the mere fact of 
telling, of saying out loud their heretofore 
fears is of enormous value to them.” 

The old Doctor paused and with the end of 
his fork prodded a recalcitrant kernel from 
the nut. “This case was a stubborn one. For 
a long time the patient volunteered no confi- 
dence, until one day after a sleepless night, 
followed by a very violent thunderstorm, his 
upset nerves lost the power of control, and he 
confessed. It appeared he had been very much 
in love with a yoimg girl, in simple circum- 
stances, but of decent upbringing; that he had 
betrayed her, knowing that he did not mean to 
do the right thing by her. And the fact that 
he knew he was doing wrong by her had so 
undermined his confidence in himself, that he 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 175 


could no longer carry through successfully his 
dealings in Wall Street. That may seem 
strange to you, but it is a psychological fact.” 

Vacla moved as if to settle his arms more 
comfortably on the arms of his chair. It was a 
Dutch chair of inlaid mahogany and the arms 
were beautifully carved. He was proud of it. 
It was rare, and he had given a good price for 
it conscious that he was getting a prize. 

“I suppose every day,” he said, “these spe- 
ciaUst chaps have people going to them with 
imaginary ills.” He felt as if the old Doctor 
were watching him. “Of course,” he added, 
with a raised eyebrow, “there is many a suc- 
cessful man in Wall Street without Sir Gala- 
had’s reputation.” He spoke satirically. 

The old Doctor’s kind eyes were upon him. 

“A man who indulges in small sins never 
carries through great ends,” he answered. 

Darkness had closed in over New York. The 
curtains were drawn. The shaded lamps were 
lighted, diffusing a gentle glow over the room, 
like the glow of kindliness that emanated from 
Vacla’s guest. 

As he rose later to say good-bye, Dr. Ebbing 
stood for a moment looking round, feeling the 
atmosphere of the room, he who knew so well 


176 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


how to take an impression from his surround- 
ings. Here he sensed an atmosphere of accu- 
mulation, quick accumulation of things that 
had not had time to jostle down beside each 
other. An atmosphere of luxury -combined 
with a slight sense of uneasiness, the uneasiness 
of too-hurried fortune. 

Dr. Ebbing hesitated. In this security com- 
bined with strength and youth he felt his 
profiPered sympathy misplaced. Then gently 
drawing his finger and thumb together across 
his chin, he took his decision. 

“My boy,” he said, “if you should ever fall 
ill, or need help, or advice, let me know. I 
often take a run down here.” 

He looked into Vacla’s face, and his kind 
and enthusiastic eyes became almost piercing 
for a moment. 

“Would you come down just to see me?” 

“Of course I would.” 

“But what,” Vacla interrupted quietly, 
“what would you get out of it? It would be 
wasting your time.” 

“No,” the Doctor began in energetic pro- 
test. “To be able to help another is never waste 
of time.” He spoke with a sincerity that was 
unmistakable. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 177 


Vacla put his hands in his pockets and 
shifted his weight idly from one foot to an- 
other. 

‘“Down here,” he said “mwiey and money 
only — ^talks.” 

Doctor Ebbing looked at him, and seemed 
to take a resolve. 

“There’s a better thing than money,” he said 
gently. 

“What is it?” 

“Time to leave a sweet memory on the 
Earth.” 

At the door Dr. Ebbing looked back. “I 
forgot to tell you that Natalie is going to marry 
young Curtis Browne in June,” he said. “I 
think you wiU agree he is a lucky beggar. It 
seems just a short time ago that I used to tell 
her about little Red Riding Hood; but the 
young win grow. Thfi_young life pushes out 
the old, and the eternal freshness is maintained. 
Good-bye, my boy. If you ever need me, don’t 
forget. Medicine has greater scientists than 
old Ebbing, but no one is more glad to be of 
use.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


“Funny old duck!” thought Vacla to him- 
self as Dr. Ebbing took his leave, but he no- 
ticed that he did not say it with scorn. The old 
Doctor managed to leave a kindly impression. 
Things had gone out of Vacla’s life, gentle 
things, unimportant, unprophetic things, and 
Vacla glimpsed them as one watches the rose 
leaves on the eddying water, that one has 
thrown from the deck of a vessel. 

He did not know whether it was imagination, 
but he had observed an unusual air about Isaac- 
son. He thought sometimes that it was the 
thing that he had brought to hfe in himself, 
that Isaacson was observing the business trick- 
iness he had developed of late. 

“And yet I am just as I was,” he said. “The 
resemblance is not impaired,” but life dis- 
quieted him. Among the things that contented 
him for his trickiness was his new motor car. 
While looking at it and the hard blue sky, he 
was content. And then at intervals by devious 
paths his mind led him to fear. He was afraid. 

178 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 179 


Of Isaacson? No, but of Vinevar, the all pow- 
erful. At times, he was afraid that Vinevar 
would discover that he had tricked h i m . 

Each day he strengthened himself by saying, 
“Unless I confess, they will never know that I 
pointed out the short cut to Japan. My will- 
power is supreme. I will never confess.” 

/ He measured the facts carefully. In spite 
/of his luxuries, his motor car, his new antiques, 
\he liked life less. Not consciously; he did not 
•know it; but-heJiad lost faith, the_precious key 
ithat_ unlocks the closed door. He was never 

I . ^ 

Itired, never discouraged, but softness, gentle- 
ness had abandoned him. He was hard. 

Isaacson, watching anxiously, saw himself 
shunned. 

“Anna,” said Isaacson to his wife one eve- 
ning, “self is not enough.” 

“No, Jacob,” she answered. She took it as 
a compliment. She thought he was including 
her. Isaacson’s face was yellow and tired. He 
was kindly and he saw things going wrong. 

It was at this juncture that Japan came to 
Vinevar with an open threat. 

There was no light in Vinevar’s eyes when 
he was threatened, but his slight nervous hands 
tightened a little on his knees. He had his 


180 THE CAPTIVE HERB 


caprices, and one of them was that he tried to 
know everything about any situation in hand. 
He intimated that he knew all he did not know 
to the representative of Japan, and he realized 
he must make Vacla tell him just what he had 
told them. 

It is said that the emotions, arrested halfway, 
are transformed into intelligence, philosophy, 
art. A notable part of Vinevar’s emotions had 
gone to the making of a craftsman, a man half- 
way between a great artist and a great in- 
triguer. And yet, diverted as his emotions 
were, he saw the value of everything in the 
world. Strange as it may seem, even the songs 
of the birds were not lost to him. He knew the 
value of the crowd; that successes are shaped 
in the street, and that the man who knows all 
that anyone knows about any situation has for 
the most part nothing to fear. So as Vacla 
feared sometimes the consequences of having 
sold information, Vinevar knew that if he 
could find out exactly the information sold, he 
could circumvent all action and need fear 
nothing. 

“Life,” said Vinevar to himself, “what is it? 
The exercise of our intellect in moments of 
despair. The test of our courage in moments 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 181 


of apprehension, and the continous idea of the 
advancement of our race.” 

His country-house was on Long Island, 
within sound of the sea. He thought: “I will 
ask the young man down to stay with me, and 
I will find out just what I wish to know.” 

He called his secretary. His secretary was 
not a young man. He was a man with a shriv- 
elled face and grizzly hair. 

“You will write a letter to Mr. Melfort, and 
invite him to stay with me for a few days.” 

The secretary wrote the name Mr. Melfort 
on his writing pad. 

“Yes,” he said. “The usual formula?” 

Vinevar nodded his head. 

“The usual formula.” 

The secretary sniffed. He did not like Mr. 
Melfort. He scented a man after him, put 
before him. 

“He should be very pleased,” he said. “It 
is good of you to have him.” 

“That is my business,” said Vinevar sharply. 

A smile came out on the old secretary’s face, 
the smile of the English servant who knows 
that life may not be all beer and skittles. The 
secretary was a man Vinevar had picked up in 
England, a man culpable in a matter, but un- 


182 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


punished and bound to Vinevar for his rescue, 
and for this in his yellow, grizzly way he was 
devoted to Vinevar. 

“The association of ideas is not always with 
exactitude,” said Vinevar. “Bring me the last 
reports, and see the letter goes at once.” 

The secretary nodded. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


Vacla repeated his resolve: “I will not be- 
tray myself. My will being in my own con- 
trol, I will tell nothing that I have not chosen 
to tell.” 

Mixed feelings stirred in him as he drove 
along Forty-Second Street. The traffic stopped 
his taxi. The elevated train rattled over- 
head. The policeman waved his hand, and with 
a jerk the taxi shot forward. A typewriter 
sign caught his eye : “Why rent, if for five dol- 
lars a month you may become the owner of a 
typewriter?” Every time his taxi paused he 
read the signs in the windows. He saw a 
machine splashing its arms in soapy water. 
He saw people hurrying in every direction. 
Beyond Broadway on a cross street he saw 
a funny tumble-down wooden house of two 
stories beside a seventeen-story office building. 
The tumble-down house was occupied as a 
shop. It displayed the sign, “Auctioneer.” 
In front of it were pieces of wrought iron in 
various degrees of rust. He wondered if the 
183 


184 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


auctioneer took them in at night. No, he 
couldn’t. They were rusty from being rained 
upon. Then why did not some tramp steal 
them — these old lanterns and fire-dogs and 
wrought iron pieces? So his brain clicked, 
clicked, as he drove. 

He arrived at the station, gave his bags to a 
porter, and was led to the train, a long inter- 
minable suburban train, full of people with 
packages and parcels. 

Vacla’s imagination ran along the tracks. 
He knew nothing of Vinevar’s object in asking 
him to stay. He went grudgingly. The in- 
vitation was from his chief. He dare not 
refuse it. 

Once or twice as he looked through the win- 
dow he was attacked by apprehension, by what 
Isaacson called “cold feet.” He drove this 
feeling away by an effort of will. He was 
master of himself. He would betray nothing. 

At the station he was met by Vinevar’s 
chauffeur. He had often seen him waiting be- 
side the car, as it stood before Isaacson’s office. 

“Mr. Melfort, sir,” the chauffeur touched 
his cap. 

Vacla handed him his bag and followed. 

“Anything in the baggage car, sir?” 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 185 


Vacla took a cheque from his vest pocket. 

“It will be sent up later,” said the chauffeur, 
intimating that the car was too precious to 
carry anything heavy. Vacla got into the 
motor. 

On the way to the house he rehearsed his 
part. He would be restrained and cautious. 
Who was Vinevar after aU? A Hebrew. 
Powerful, it was true. Well, so far in a busi- 
ness way the lid had not been off. He shouldn’t 
be surprised if Vinevar wanted the cards laid 
on the table. Well, he would not lay them. 

He sat swaying upon the seat of the car, 
looking through the window at the setting sun, 
as if he were a crystal gazer, and the window 
were a crystal in which he might see the future. 
So he brooded, the car threading its way on. 
And looking at the luxurious country houses, 
he thought: “These people have these things 
now. Later on, I shall have them.” In a 
queer outlandish way, these ideas passed 
through his brain as he drove along the con- 
crete roads to Vinevar’s house. 

Passing a bend of the road that ran close 
to the sea, his attention was attracted by the 
seagulls’ unrestful movements, movements that 
they make as they cry and fly when a storm 


186 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


is impending. Another few minutes, and the 
motor passed through two square stone gates. 
As they drew up before a colossal door, the 
chauffeur sounded his horn, and the door 
opened quietly. Vacla got out of the motor 
and walked up the stone steps. 

As he crossed the square hall, Vinevar him- 
self came out of an adjoining room. A fixed 
smile was on his lips. It somehow made an 
impleasant impression on Vacla. It was not 
the impression he expected, and it threw him 
into secret confusion. 

Vinevar shook him by the hand, gave him 
momentarily into the care of a Japanese ser- 
vant, and then excused himself, saying that 
he was having a business interview, but would 
be free almost immediately. Vacla gave his 
hat and coat to the man, and was ushered 
into a large living-room, a room extravagantly 
and expensively furnished by a man, a room 
with no chintz covers, none of those small use- 
|less things bought for the mere pleasure of 
; buying, that are generally to be found in a 
woman’s room. The room held as it were a dry 
and reasoned sense of a conservative idea, not 
always in the best taste, but unswervingly 
faithful to a fixed and elaborate purpose. Did 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 187 


the elimination of all bibelots, all small and 
useless things in the room mean the elimina- 
tion of everything that did not make for the 
main issues of a decided tendency? The hang- 
ings were dark. The chairs were of dark 
leather. The pictures on the walls were not 
light and sunny scenes of nature, but portraits 
of tragic, wistful and unhappy humanity. The 
man servant who handed him the cigarettes 
and the morning paper to go with this setting 
could have been no other than a Japanese. 
Two sides of the room from the floor to the 
ceiling were lined with books, and in the room 
seemed to dwell great qualities, possessed by 
the owner in an extraordinary degree, namely, 
strength of will and persistency of purpose. 

"When Vacla had smoked one cigarette and 
was about to take up the paper, Vinevar re- 
turned; almost as if it had been his intention 
that his guest should first get the atmosphere 
of the environment from the room, almost as if 
in the long course of his career he had become 
accustomed to allow inanimate objects to work 
for him, thus letting adventitious circumstances 
work for his own strong individuality. 

Vinevar stood with his back to the fire dang- 
ling his glasses on a black ribbon. One of his 


188 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


gestures was to flick the glasses on the end of 
the ribbon, as he made some remark. 

“Ah!” he said, flicking his eyeglass and fol- 
lowing Vacla’s eyes resting on a picture of a 
young man with a thoughtful oval face, “Ah!” 
said Vinevar, “you are gazing at the favourite 
of courts and kings. A bubble, as it were, of 
the wine of time, pricked at the last for serving 
too well his king.” Vinevar swayed backwards 
and forwards from his toes to his heels, still 
looking at the portrait to the left of the book- 
shelves. 

“You remember Wolsey: 

“0 Cromwell, Cromwell! 

f ad I but served my God with half the zeal 
served my King, he would not in mine age 
tiave left me naked to mine enemies.” 

“Hein! Those words convey the meaning 
of that pictme. The favourite of courts and 
kings, like Hmnpty Dumpty, had a great fall. 
Many, many are the bubbles of life. And it is 
only through his ideas and his imagination that 
a man lives beyond his time — lives on after 
death, in the thought movements of the world. 
It may seem to you a paradox. It is a truth. 
The key of economy is waste. A squandering, 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 189 


appearing on a superficial glance to be waste, 
that is really not a waste, but a prodigal sow- 
ing intended to embody wealth in the futinre. 
The man of ideas and imagination is not look- 
ing to pluck the corn before it is ripe. He 
does not dare to shoot ahead alone with money. 
Abreast of money must go development, and 
for the results of enterprise he is content to 
waiLJ Yes, the wise man does not try to pluck 
the corn before it is ripe.” 

Vacla drank in every word that Vinevar let 
fall, and watched him as a dog watches his 
master’s slightest movement. And yet he did 
not altogether like the subject of the conver- 
sation. It seemed to put ashes on the too vivid 
hopes of youth. His conscience convicted him. 
By an adroit turn, he switched the conversation 
to art. 

“Art,” repeated Vinevar. “What is Art? 
It is arbitrated by feeling rather than by intel- 
lect. In literature we have the hymns of the 
Vedas, the story of Isaac and Jacob, and two 
thousand years ago, the semi-savage imitation 
of the nude by the Greeks. Fashions, the 
manners of drapery change ; the human figure 
remains the same. The test of the classic is 
that it appeals to all classes of aU time, hence 


190 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


perhaps the tearing off, the lack of drapery. 
In particular, I take it to he the perfect balance 
of body and soul, though here and there the 
Impressionists drag one in front of the other.” 

Vinevar dangled his eye-glass. 

“The test of art, my young man, is its in- 
fectiousness. If you are reading a book and 
you put it down to see something more than 
the artist says, lurking in yom* own imagina- 
tion; if you are looking at a portrait and you 
see not merely a man, but efforts, hopes, 
dreams, frustrated energies, disappointments 
and isolation; you are in the presence of art. 
Whistler’a portrait of Carlyle is not only made 
great by the lonely crags in the life of Carlyle 
himself, but by the isolation that you and I 
bring to gaze upon it. Art is the abstract 
formed from the concrete. Art, great art, is 
not only of this life, it is of lives innumerable 
and forgotten. To-night I must show you my 
statues ; I have a Rodin of marble. It is to my 
mind more valuable than bronze. Bronze may 
be cast. A replica might be made of bronze 
cast on a mould. Carved marble must be 
carved.” 

So talked Vinevar, the king of international 
finance — arousing, fanning in Vacla the thirst 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 191 


he had never satisfied, the thirst of ownership 
for material things. 

He and Vinevar dined alone. 

“My daughter is not strong,” said Vinevar. 
“She is not able to come down to-night, but you 
will see her to-morrow.” 

Vacla went to bed, his brain excited by what 
wealth may bring. Lust of the possession of 
beautiful things took hold of him. 

Vinevar was certainly a personality, great 
in a small ofiice talking to Isaacson, but greater 
at home surroimded by signed art treasures 
representing great expenditure and certainly 
authentic. Well, some day he would have some 
of these things for himself. After all, the eve- 
ning had passed off very pleasantly. Probably 
Vinevar had no motive for asking him. He 
was becoming too apprehensive. 

As he opened his window he smelt the salt 
of the sea, and when he was in bed he thought 
he heard the sound of the waves of the Atlantic 
Ocean breaking on the shores of America. 


CHAPTER XXX 


The next morning after breakfast Vinevar 
took Vacla to what he called his “long room” 
(given this name on accoxmt of its shape) 
where he kept his pieces of marble, his Japan- 
ese prints and curios. 

“Japan,” said Vinevar, “deals essentially in 
things of luxury and beauty. These things seU 
in all civihsed countries because they are the 
best of their kind. It is strange that Japan 
has never been able to paint wonderfully in 
oil. Ideal work is stiU out of their reach — I 
mean oil painting in the European manner — 
they have never been able to combine with their 
own methods of artistic expression.” 

Vinevar drew his fingers and thumb up and 
down the black silk ribbon on which he wore his 
eyeglasses. He pointed to the picture of a 
Chinese god painted on glass, a god holding 
a lotus flower. “Japan has broken down the 
power of China, Japan has copied the painting 
of that method, but that is essentially Chinese. 
Although,” Vinevar added, “I have seen some 
192 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


193 


very good examples of painting on glass done 
by the Japanese.” 

For a moment Vacla had a battle with him- 
self, a battle with caution. He felt in this in- 
stance it were better to hsten than to take part 
in the conversation. But the scmples of youth 
are inevitably laid by the young and human 
wish to show one’s own knowledge. Age lays 
.her finger on her lips and says what she thinks 
I fit. Youtluwith a fine gesture makes state- 
ments she would give her future to recall. 

“I have seen just such a picture on glass 
done by a Japanese,” said Vacla. 

“Where?” 

“In Oguri-Hangwan’s apartment.” 

“Ah! you know the little man from the East. 
Where did you meet him?” 

But Vacla had no sooner said that he had 
seen the picture, than he wished the words back. 
The shock of recognition, of seeing that the 
picture was exactly the same had tempted him. 
Had he betrayed himself? Quickly he sought 
to recover. 

“I met Oguri-Hangwan,” he said slowly, 
“in the auction rooms. We were both bidding 
on a particular piece. Naturally, he outbid me 
and I lost it.” 


194 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Vinevar’s eyes narrowed. He opened his 
lips and brought them together with a quick 
movement. Vacla watched him suspiciously. 

“Well,” said Vinevar, “you have met a most 
remarkable man.” 

Instantly Vacla felt relieved, and the air 
cleared. 

For the rest of the morning Vacla was on his 
guard. He listened to all that Vinevar had to 
say attentively. He felt that from him he had 
much to learn. 

At luncheon Vinevar’s daughter made her 
first appearance. After luncheon Vacla was 
left alone with her for a short time. 

Her face was pretty and had the wistful, 
eager expression of the bhnd. Something oc- 
curred which caused her to make an apology for 
her blindness. 

“After aU,” said Vacla, “why should you 
apologise that you can’t find some particular 
object? You have what has always been to 
me one of the greatest pleasures of life, the 
knowledge of sound. I expect now, you hear 
fine tones in music that pass me by.” 

The charm of Vacla’s voice had always been 
one of his chief assets. He softened its timbre. 


'rtlE CAPTIVE HERD 195 

knowing that here, that and that alone must 
serve him. 

Miranda smiled slightly. 

“Yes,” she said, “I am like an instrument, 
that responds only to the echo of sound. My 
father minds, but I am very happy, very 
happy. And my father always says I have 
a great feeling for people. He means that I 
see sometimes, what the seeing do not. Some- 
times in town, in the crowd going to a concert, 
I hear someone say something to somebody 
else. Who they are, I do not know. I never 
see the face, but the soimd of the voice brings 
a thrill of incomprehensible pleasure or pain. 
Dead suns, father says. He means that the 
soimd reminds me of a previous existence.” 

“Surely,” said Vacla gently, “it is hard for 
you, but as I said, you must hear things that 
we do not.” 

Vinevar gave Vacla a suspicious look, as he 
came into the room. 

“You have forgotten the birds, my child,” 
he said to his daughter. “You always pay them 
a visit after lunch.” 

It was Sunday, and during the afternoon 
Vacla and Vinevar sat discussing art. 

“Ah!” said Vinevar, “you will be really sur- 


196 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


prised at my collection of jade. I just need 
one or two representative pieces, and my col- 
lection will be equal to any in the country. Do 
you know anything about jade, Melfort?” 

“I am afraid that I do not know very 
much.” 

“I wish,” Vinevar continued, “I could find 
one large piece. It would not matter if the 
base were slightly pink, so that it were of suf- 
ficient size to offset the smaller and more per- 
fect pieces. Now they say that the largest bit 
in the States is in the collection of Ratelli — 
Ratelli has the largest bit.” 

“No, he hasn’t,” interrupted Vacla. 

“Why, do you know of a larger?” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“After all,” argued Vinevar with a sort of 
glum interest, “this man you know of might 
be tempted to sell. Do you know the owner?” 

In a flash the thought went through Vacla’s 
mind, that he ought to have kept away from 
the subject of jade. At so direct a question 
from one to whom it was impossible to make 
an evasive reply, Vacla hesitated for a moment. 

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I do.” 

“Who is it?” 

“Kaneuji, of the Japanese legation,” replied 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 197 


Vacla, mentioning reluctantly another of the 
Japanese clique. 

“We all have oin* little hobbies,” replied 
Vinevar, after a pause. “Perhaps you can put 
me in the way of getting this valuable piece, 
put me in the way of meeting this man?” 

Not knowing that Vinevar had had an inter- 
view with this man only two days before, and 
proud to be able to introduce Vinevar to any 
one, for answer Vacla said that he would ar- 
range to have Vinevar and Kaneuji meet at his 
apartment. 

That night, Vacla was really in a very anx- 
ious mood and notwithstanding the fact that he 
wished to leave a good impression on his host, 
he could not bring himself to be cheerful. The 
feeling of confidence that Vinevar was talking 
art for art’s sake had left him. Vinevar had 
wanted to know, no doubt had planned the 
conversation to find out whether he knew 
Kaneuji and Oguri-Hangwan. Vacla was in 
a painful dilemma. He had promised to bring 
about a meeting. The pressure of anxiety 
drew near to his bedside and stood beside him 
that night. 

On Monday morning he was to return to 
town. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


Next morning as Vacla was waiting for the 
motor that was to take him to the station, Vine- 
var turned squarely to him with a question : 

“You won’t forget now, that you have prom- 
ised to introduce me to Kaneuji? I would give 
so much to have that large piece of jade, the 
largest piece in America, I think you said.” 

Vacla nodded. 

With great affability, Vinevar continued, 
“Well, I put myself in your hands. I trust to 
you to arrange a meeting.” 

The car had been standing some distance off . 
The chauffeur now brought it to the front 
door. 

Vacla timned to shake hands with his host. 
“I must let you know,” he said, hiding success- 
fully a kind of embarrassment. 

He got into the waiting motor and waved 
his hand. As the car moved off, Vinevar stood 
watching it go through the square stone gate 
posts, and as" it passed from sight, he swung 
his eyeglass to and fro on the black ribbon, and 
198 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 199 

nodding his head he smiled and went into the 
house. 

Now Vacla had something of his father’s 
balance, a poise inherited from Wyndham of 
Winchester ; yet nevertheless on his way up to 
town, he was, to put it moderately, perturbed, 
extremely perturbed. 

In the first place, he felt Vinevar had a mo- 
tive for asking him down, and Vinevar seemed 
quite satisfied with the result of the visit, so if 
he had a motive, the result was doubtless satis- 
factory. And in the second place, there was a 
fact he, Vacla had hidden. It related to the 
piece of jade. It did not belong to Kaneuji, 
as he had stated, but was his. Kaneuji had 
given it to him in part payment for the infor- 
mation he had given. Kaneuji had told him 
to get what he could for it, as well as the sum 
he was to receive. It was an awkward situa- 
tion. Vinevar had adhiitted that morning, that 
he had heard of the celebrated jade Buddha. 
An extremely awkward situation, it was. He 
dare not sell it to Vinevar, because Vinevar 
might want to know how it came to be in his 
possession. He must call upon the poise of 
his sturdy Enghsh soul. Only that morning 
Vinevar had said he would give a large price 


200 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


for the jade Buddha. Vacla’s cupidity reared 
its head. 

The train rattled on. Well, well, thought 
Vacla, the visit that he had dreaded had txu-ned 
out successfully. Why woriy? Strong craft 
was ever built for stormy seas, and his was 
undoubtedly a strong craft. And just as on 
many a Monday morning on many a suburban 
train hopes had stirred again in the hearts of 
the travellers, hope stirred in his heart, an un- 
reasoning optimism, born from the excitement 
bred by the multiplied life of the city. Worry 
indeed, why should he? A quoijion? Strong 
craft was ever built for stormy seas. Let life 
send what it would, he would weather it. 

And yet in this changed mood of his, this 
bracing of his will for effort and resistance, the 
fulness of life had somehow given way to a 
disenchantment. Music, which had so far been 
his most sought-for path in the realm of art, 
music even had momentarily lost its interest. 
The paper lay on his knee. Usually he looked 
for the notices of the operas to be given, and 
the concerts of the week. For the moment he 
did not care. The callous hardness of the mate- 
rial was overspreading his artistic soul. The 
inward revelation of good and evil was blunted 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 201 


in him. That gone from a human being there 
is no proof of the existence of God, and a man 
becomes like the statue of himself. 

When he had come to New York to start 
\his career, it had seemed to him that posses- 
ysions, worldly assets were the answer to the 
question of life. Now he had gone a step lower 
^ on the ladder, a step lower in the adamantine 
descent, for life no longer asked a question. 
There were no more discussions. There was 
no more moralizing on the changing places of 
the stars; their distances, weight and motions 
had lost their magic, as they must do in the 
vmremitting quest for gain. Milhons of men 
had witnessed them. Millions of men would 
witness them. His time on earth was too short. 
He was an individual fighting for his own 
rights. 

As his train drew into Pennsylvania Sta- 
tion, he took a deep breath of gasoline-scented 
air, and prepared to plunge with all his youth- 
ful vigour into the struggle for the quick ac- 
quisition of wealth in Greater New York. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


The more Vacla thought of the jade 
Buddha, the more he became convinced that it 
would be better to be rid of it. If Vinevar 
had any knowledge of jade at all, he must see 
that the bit was worth a lot of money. More- 
over, the piece was marked in the sense of being 
impossible to duplicate on accoimt of its size. 

The thought came to him to tell Kaneuji 
that he was returning it to him. And yet his 
cupidity stepped in. It was worth a certain 
sum, and it was his. No. He must return it 
to Kaneuji, it was true. But Kaneuji must 
pay him. 

Again his wisdom was put aside. Again his 
cupidity took its place. During the week, he 
managed to run into Kaneuji. He suggested 
to him, that he take back the Buddha and dis- 
pose of it, giving Vacla the proceeds. He even 
went so far as to say that he knew of a possible 
purchaser. 

But Kaneuji rubbed his small yellow hands 
202 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 203 

together, “If my friend must sell,” he said, 
“then sell. Kaneuji does not object. But” — 
again he rubbed his hands together — “Kaneuji 
has given something, Kaneuji has got some- 
thing. It is finished. In the province of 
Sagami we do like this. We give something, 
for which we receive something, then it is fin- 
ished.” 

Vacla flinched. He had not expected such 
obduracy. Well, the Buddha was worth a 
large sum. He would keep it. So the wheels 
of life timn. 

And then, one evening after dinner, he took 
the jade Buddha out of its case and put it on 
the table beside him. His Japanese manser- 
vant came into the room to take away the coffee 
cup. Vacla watched him, but he did not appear 
to notice the Buddha. Vacla sat for some time 
watching it. Then he went to his bookcase and 
took out a volume by St. Amant on the life 
of Napoleon. He was interested in reading 
a description of Napoleon after Austerlitz, 
and of how the post which was distributed 
among the guards brought him a letter from 
Josephine. And he was interested in the very 
human touch, that in his letter from Josephine 
she wrote, “that some personage of the Fau- 


204 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


boiirg St. Germaine had refused to receive 
her.” All the evening the standards of the 
defeated armies had been brought to him suc- 
cessively, one by one. All the evening the 
proofs of his victory had followed each other in 
succession. And yet his victory was all spoiled 
for him, by the little social slight to Josephine 
in Paris. 

Vacla read on, intoxicated by the story of 
Napoleon’s triumph. Vaguely, afterwards he 
remembered having heard the door-bell of his 
apartment ring. At the moment he did not 
notice it. Then suddenly he looked up and saw 
Vinevar standing before him, Vinevar dressed 
in evening clothes covered by a black cape, his 
opera hat still on his head, his white gloves 
and his ebony gold-tipped cane in his hand. 
Vacla started hke a man who has been asleep, 
who suddenly finds the earth giving way be- 
neath him. At once he remembered the jade 
Buddha. 

“My young friend,” said Vinevar, “permit 
me to put down my gloves and to lay aside my 
cape. I see that you have acquired the cele- 
brated Buddha of jade. Vinevar is wise. He 
knows his world. He comes when the bird is 
on the nest. You have undoubtedly a better 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 205 


knowledge of jade than of servants. My dear 
Melfort, you are delivered into my hand.” 

Vacla stood up. When there is a situation 
to be met, it is better to stand, than to sit. One 
is in fuller command of all one’s power. It 
was strange, too, that he never thought of 
evasion, he never thought of denial. WTiat he 
said when the first shock of the words was past, 
was: “Who gave me away?” 

Vinevar seated himself and crossed his knees, 
as though he were preparing to enjoy the sit- 
uation. 

“My ledgers,” he said slowly, “are well 
kept. My business plans are without defect. 
It became known to me that I was sold. I 
determined to know who sold me. Who be- 
trayed you? Your manservant, brother of my 
butler, who has given you such smart service 
and made you so comfortable. Great God of 
Russia, Melfort ! If a man has perfect service 
to-day, if his wants are all attended to, he 
should inquire into it at once. Let him look 
to his valet. A perfect servant nowadays is 
always a criminal, or a spy. Yoims,” Vinevar 
dangled his glasses, “happens to be a spy, sent 
here by me. You are new at playing chess with 


206 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


human beings, Melfort, very new. It is a good 
game, but it needs practice.” 

Vacla felt sick and faint at this disclosure, 
but he did not defend himself. 

Vinevar went on: 

“The end of the game, my dear Melfort, is 
evidenced by one sign. The cards of one or 
other must be laid upon the table. In this case, 
it is you who lay the cards upon the table.” 

Again Vacla made no comment. 

And as he continued, Vinevar’s voice as- 
sumed a less bantering and more serious tone. 

“It became clear to me that some of my most 
valuable business secrets had been made known 
to Japan.” Vinevar’s terrible eyes travelled 
around the room. “They could only have been 
betrayed by someone with intimate knowledge 
of my affairs. I never doubted Isaacson. 
They could only have been betrayed by one, 
other than my own race. Suspicion fastened 
itself on you. Kaneuji told me he had given 
you the jade. ‘Nothing for nothing’ is the 
motto of Japan. That was enough. I told my 
spy, your servant, to let me know when you 
had the jade in your room. It was a dramatic 
method of confronting you with the situation, 
and I have a great sense of the dramatic.” 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 207 


Vinevar smiled. “To-night he telephoned. 
And I am here. In future, Melfort, you must 
choose your servants more wisely.” 

Vinevar paused and looked at Vacla like an 
orator, who is about to stagger his audience. 

“Do not shrink, Melfort. The brand of 
evil-doing is on the heart, before it is on the 
shoulders. You say nothing. No hurry, be- 
cause what I want to know, you will tell me.” 

There was a sound of something banging. 
It was the wind in the courtyard rattling the 
window. 

For the first time Vinevar fastened his eye 
on Vacla. 

“Just what you have told the little Orientals, 
word for word, I must know, so that I will 
know how to frustrate their actions. Accord- 
ing as you tell me, word for word, I will deal 
with you.” 

Vacla turned his eyes eagerly to the rattling 
window. Beyond it lay the glitter of great 
Manhattan, but to it there was no escape. 

“If you don’t tell me the truth, word for 
word,” said Vinevar, “you will live to wish 
that you had died when you were bom.” 

These words broke Vacla’s silence, and keep- 
ing his nerve as best he could, he told the exact 


208 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


story, eyeing Vinevar the while askance, un- 
steady and unflinching. 

Vinevar listened quietly and attentively. It 
was only as he neared the end of his recital, that 
Vacla saw his face quiver ironically. 

“How dared you?” he asked when Vacla 
had finished. “How dared you?” 

Afterwards, on looking back over the inter- 
view, Vacla often wondered why, at this junc- 
ture, he had not picked up Vinevar by the 
shoulders and put him out. The game was un- 
doubtedly up. Then why had he not done it? 
Vinevar’s mentally hypnotic influence must 
have held him in check. Nothing short of a 
miracle could extricate him now, and the mir- 
acle did not present itself. 

Something in Vinevar’s face, in the sudden 
uncrossing of his knees, in his rising to his 
feet, told Vacla that Vinevar had no doubt that 
he had told him the truth. 

Vinevar stood danghng his eyeglass. 

“Folly,” said Vinevar, “absolute foUyl” 

Vacla stared. 

“The results of my labours are not yet.” 
Vinevar cleared his throat. A look of rage 
passed over his face. “There remains but little 
to add,” he continued. “Except perhaps to 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 209 


impart to you the secret which governs all 
Jewish enterprise. It is a secret that I tell 
you, because I wish it made known.” Vinevar 
smiled scornfully. 

“The Gentiles complain that as a race we 
become too powerful. Now the secret of our 
power is that we put the race above the in- 
dividual. Rich and poor, always we give the 
preference to each other. We have the great- 
est modern power — ^gold. But it is always 
ready for the benefit of our own people. In a 
few days, we can get it from our treasuries in 
any desired quantity. And my answer — ^Vine- 
var’s answer to the Gentile questioning of Jew- 
ish power is this — ^when at the hands of the 
nations the Gentiles have been disciplined, I 
put it mildly, as we have been disciplined; 
when the Gentiles are as unrelenting of their 
labour, as assiduous in their studies, as broad in 
their vision, as loyal to each other, the Gentile 
will then be as powerful as the Jew. We, the 
Jews of America, like the Jews of all countries, 
are what the nations have made us, but our rule 
is d^iceed by God.” 

Vinevar continued in a more quiet tone. 

“I cannot set forth in detail my point of 
view, I can only direct your attention to the 


210 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


absurdity, that my schemes, or my prestige 
could be imperilled by anyone so undisciplined, 
so pleasure-loving as you are. There is a 
strength that is greater than metal, the strength 
of an unswerving purpose. My own life is 
nothing to me. Personal happiness, a point of 
view too late for me to imderstand. Fool that 
you are, to try to cross my path! Venge ance? 
No, I take no vengeance. I leave you to live 
your life on this earth,” Vinevar smiled bitterly, 
his upper lip drawn across his teeth, “I can 
think of no greater punishment. But when 
discussion turns upon the Jew; when around 
your dinner tables is asked the question whether 
the Jew makes a good citizen; then, Melfort, 
open your mouth and ask them how we can 
be citizens, who have been denied citizenship? 
Tell them we are powerful because by their 
diseipline we have become strong, and that our 
rule is decreed by God.” 

Vinevar put on his cape. He put on his hat. 
He took his cane and his gloves. 

“It is an old battle,” he said. “Gentile 
versus Jew. In this instance, the Jew wins 
and I have overcome mine adversary.” He 
walked towards the door. Halfway, he turned. 
“The comedy has been played before with a 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 211 


different ending. Scattered and dormant Is- 
rael has been oppressed too long.” 

With these words Vinevar passed into the 

hall. 

AU this time Vacla had said nothing. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


The clouds that had gathered so rapidly had 
broken at last; and when Vinevar left, Vacla 
sat down beside the table, and said to him- 
self: “In twenty or thirty years, I shall cer- 
tainly have outlived this, I shall have lived 
this down,” but although he said the words out 
loud, they did not comfort him. Not only were 
his prospects wrecked, but he was still afraid 
of what Vinevar might do to avenge himself, 
and his pride was hurt. And as he sat through 
the night watching the curving lips of the 
Buddha, he thought what a fool he had been! 

What would come to him now? Life would 
form independently of his will. Vinevar’s 
scorn of him had raised a fierce resistance, but 
as the night wore on, his anger spent itself and 
reacted to low spirits. He had, as it were, fol- 
lowed his own furrow. He had struck out in 
life meaning to work for himself alone. He 
had not cared for peace, or tradition, or gentle 
things, and now he was caught with his own 
weapons. 


212 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 213 


For hours, he stared at the Buddha. The 
evidence was against him, and he had given 
himself away. The disgrace — that made him 
suffer. Even the individual, who seeks his own 
fortune and goes his own way, cannot live, if 
he live in the world, immindful of the opinion 
of his fellow-men. Sick with anxiety, he sat 
through the night. What would Vinevar do? 
What wovdd Vinevar tell? Vinevar had said 
that he would leave his punishment to fate, but 
would he? He thought of the story that might 
travel to his uncle, of its bearing on the opin- 
ions of those who knew him. Isaacson, of 
course, would never forgive him, and at times 
he had hked old Isaacson when he patted him 
on the arm and called him “My Boy.” 

“Keep one’s head,” he thought, “even now, 
keep one’s head.” 

He got up and went blindly towards the 
window. He struck the end of the sofa and 
hurt his knee. He looked round the room as 
if for the first time. He would have to leave 
his apartment, sell his furniture, get rid of the 
damned Jap. He wished that he would come 
in, he would have liked to strangle him, but 
probably he had gone home for the night. No 
shelter, no protection, no love in life. 


214 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


He did not think of Natalie in this hour, nor 
of his father, the queer, reserved Enghshman, 
but he thought of his mother; the perfume and 
warmth and strength of her, as he remembered 
her when he was a httle boy. He threw himself 
down on the sofa and said her name, first softly 
and then out aloud. And as he ^aid it, it 
seemed as though her presence gained on him. 
He put out his hand, palm upwards, so that if 
she were there she would take it. 

He opened his eyes and saw nothing, but the 
silver streak of dawn outlining the frame of the 
window. Doggedly the dawn pierced its way 
through the space under the bhnd. Doggedly 
its hght battled with the hght of the still bm*n- 
ing sconces, bringing with it neither comfort 
nor pity. And Vacla, hating the thought of the 
coming day, saw it. He passed the palm of his 
hand over the cool surface of the silk cushion. 

“Mother,” he said again out loud, “O, 
Mother!” 

Where are the dead, that they hear no cry? 


I 



PART THREE 
THE HERD 

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The window itself is dark — 

But see! 

A firefly is creeping up the paper pane. 

— JaDanese Poem» 


CHAPTER XXXIV 

Beside his window looking out on the court- 
yard, Vacla spent most of his days. He caught 
glimpses of people in the apartment house op- 
posite, shadows behind muslin curtains; life as 
it were behind a veil, and then in the morning 
the turning on of artificial light, a decisive sil- 
houetting of the shadows and the blinds drawn 
down. 

If a man takes too much of a strong med- 
icine it stirs his liver and dispels a poison 
throughout his system, that should be localized. 
And if a human being be given a dose of too 
much adverse circumstances, an acid is released 
that coloms in a gloomy way his point of view. 
Vacla looked out and he saw faces drifting in 
the windows opposite, like fish in an aquarium, 
or mermaids in the sea; caged faces, in glass 
cases far away from the hypaticas blooming in 
the woods, the violets flowering unseen, and the 
throaty songs of the robins after the rain. 

He never remembered what he did in those 
days, but he remembered what he thought. 

217 


218 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Something had come to life in him, something 
sad and lonely and aching, that might some day 
be greater than any feeling that had as yet 
dominated him. Something that in its worst 
phase has a frayed collar and a leaking boot; 
something that in its best phase passes its 
fingers through the stars. The consistently 
righteous have little need of encouragement. 
They go quite naturally along a wide road 
where the sun is always shining. They need 
as it were no God. But the confused gleam 
of the stars is to the man to whom night has 
come. Between these two types, the righteous 
man and the sinner, lies the whole range of 
life. The righteous judge life from the high 
noon and the broad way. There is no shading. 
There can be no excuse. There is the test of 
a high light on the smallest action. But the 
sinner is a _,man of the shadows. Night has 
come. The test was proffered and he was 
found wanting in the strength of resistance. 
Pie is looking for the darkness, for forgiveness 
and the stars. All men are capable of trans- 
gression, but only the sinner is capable of re- 
ceiving forgiveness. It is a quality that pre- 
supposes suffering. It is the dew that lies on 
i( the flowers when the night is over. The right- 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 219 


eous have no need of encouragement, their 
righteousness is in itself a coat of mail secur- 
ing them from the chance arrows of fortune. 
Righteousness is a quahty, but sin is an essence, 
a poisonous essence of the soul scenting oppo- 
sition and criticism and condemnation to be 
as relentless as righteousness itself. To the 
righteous man life is flattery and praise, death 
a stepping into a larger space where he will 
tgceive more flattery, praise and happiness. 
iThe sinner connects the idea of nothingness 
oirith the idea of death. He becomes nothing, 
less that is, than he is and then he ceases to exist. 
He passes into the night, the part of time that 
is his and the darkness claims him. 

Vacla sat by his window thinking of things 
as they are. The expression of his face had 
changed, it was no longer sunny, his bps no 
longer smiled. Expression is the mirror of a 
man’s habitual mood. If a man has been 
pressing with all his force in one direction only 
to find his eiforts frustrated, his goal impossible 
of attainment, he has to shift, as it were, the 
weight of his existence; to change one urge 
for another urge. Only according to his power 
successfully to accomphsh this, is his readjust- 
ment possible, but the process of shifting is 


220 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


difficult, extremely difficult. Vacla had been 
accumulating wealth quickly, along a given 
line. Wealth was no longer possible of ac- 
cumulation to him along this line. His income 
had with suddermess stopped. A new tenant 
would soon take over the lease of his apart- 
ment. A new tenant would sit at the window 
watching the shadows on the blinds opposite. 
His furniture would be sold, and he must begin 
life again from some new angle, a man beaten 
in the first round. The gods give ignorance 
for the first round, security, confidence of a 
man in himself and a lack of realizing the pos- 
sible adverse combinations of life. Men and 
women many of them have pushed through 
with ignorance as their greatest card. But when 
that goes, although a man has gained in ex- 
perience, there is a doubt in his heart that was 
not there before, it is the fear that comes with 
knowledge of the possible combinations that 
may exist in hfe. Powerful though the man 
may be, the urge is not so great as in the day 
of his ignorance, when he had no imagination 
of the things which may oppose him. And so 
the shapes of the imagination which the right- 
eous, the busy, the partially successfvil do not 
suspect creep in upon the failure. In an ever- 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 221 


tightening circle, he sits down as it were to 
interpret the scenes among which he has grown. 

The hours of the clepsedra, the water-clock, 
are drops in the ocean of time. Individual life 
is to collective life like drops in the ocean. 

Tick — tick, tick — tick, went the minutes 
past Vacla, the man who had lost his position 
by being dishonorable, through not playing 
the game. Millions and millions of drops in the 
ocean swelling the tide, drawn up by the power 
of the sim to return upon the earth again. 
Vacla was brought to the few old thoughts of 
; life. Why we are here and what we are doing 
and where we will go when it is over. The race 
for money has one great point in its favour, one 
thing you must say for it whether you will or 
no, and that is, that activity precludes thought. 
When a man is racing after money, he has no 
need of a compass, for he has no time to take 
his bearings. 

“Wings,” said Vacla to himself, “that’s what 
/I want, wings, something to lift me out of this 
/level where I find myself.” He went over to 
the bookcase, took out the dictionary and looked 
up the word, “wing.” The definition was, “An 
organ of flight.” Yes, he wanted wings, and 
he must be going, moving on to the next phase, 


222 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


one of those varied and successive phases that 
argue the passing of time. On past the known 
sign posts to new ones. Life stiU an adventure, 
by reason of the possibilities argued by change. 
That man is not alone who has ambition, his 
ambition is always with him. It may as long 
as the illusion is preserved be the chief motive 
of his being, but in its silent wintry hours, it 
has no solace of remembered loving deeds, am- 
bition has had time to still no cry. 

Over and over Vacla repeated to himself that 
he had been a fool. At first he waited for 
Isaacson to come to see him to upbraid him. 
With Isaacson he was prepared to defend 
himself, but Isaacson never came. His prison 
though was opening. Say rather one cell was 
taking the place of another. The last day and 
the last evening in his apartment came and 
went, and with its going came the day when he 
piled his bags on a taxi and drove uptown to 
a room which he had taken in a boarding house. 
The new tenant was to take possession of his 
apartment in a week. During the week his 
furniture which had been sold was to be re- 
moved. 

Activity, momentum, action, movement keep 
some natm*es going. As long as there is some- 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 223 


thing to be done, as long as action is possible, 
they are brave, they keep up, their spirits are 
even heroic. That is the character born of the 
active life, meeting a trial of nerve. Then 
comes a crisis, the step up in trial when the 
discipline of the inner life is needed to give 
strength. This the man of action has had no 
time to acquire. The knowledge of self, neces- 
sary to navigate in stormy waters, has never 
been cultivated. This is the cataclysm for the 
man of action, his blank wall, that action is no 
longer possible. In his ears has always been 
the sound of bustle and hurry. He wants it 
to continue. He is afraid of the stillness inside 
himself ; a quietness hidden and spreading like 
the stillness before the Creation when the Earth 
was without form, and void, and darkness over- 
spread it. There was no fact in Vacla now, 
but this haunting quiet, this stillness that had 
begun in him and was spreading through his 
being. It is the ether of life at its source, and 
in it the spirit rests ere it begins to grow. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


It was strange how the outward appearance 
of Vacla’s life differed, from the day when he 
had the secmity of a fixed income and a given 
position. Certainly worldly appearances are 
not kept up without a corresponding expen- 
diture, and dignity of life is mostly resultant 
of an expenditure of money. As against the 
man of property the socialist plays for the 
most part a losing game, the man who does not 
back himself up with the ideas of a socialist 
a lost game. In his cy nic ism Yacla mocked at 
the socialists, the men who pretended they 
wanted nothing, because they had nothing. 

It was because he failed, during the weeks of 
idleness, to realize the ever shifting scenes of 
life. Dehberately he had gone to the boarding 
house as Mr. Max Ecstein. He dropped his 
name, and as Mr. Max Ecstein he seemed to 
have no wish to make the best of life. With the 
regularity of a loafer, he drifted out to the park 
and watched the children feeding the squirrels, 
or playing with their hoops, or eyeing other 
224 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 225 


children as children do. He was grateful in the 
morning, that he had made the choice of a 
r efug e, and he went to the park with the reg- 
ularity of a man going to his office, a regular, 
imimaginative habit. 

At last there came a day when he departed 
from his regular routine. He had read in the 
Sunday paper that the “Blue Boy” was to be 
exhibited in one of the better known galleries, 
and he felt for a moment the interest of a man 
who has wished to become a collector. With 
an assiduity as pathetic as it was absurd he 
dressed himself more carefully, as though bid- 
den to this exhibition, and walked downtown to 
see the picture. As he turned to go into the 
building, he heard someone caU him by his 
name, “Melfort!” 

“An acquaintance,” he thought. “What 
shall I do? Pretend not to hear?” But again 
he heard the name Melfort and felt the pres- 
sure of a hand on his arm. He turned and 
faced Kaneuji. Kaneuji was nodding to him 
familiarly. In old Japan the merchant ranked 
below the common peasant. Did this scorn of 
trade still lurk in the man who was engaged 
in the furthering of the trade of Japan? 

“WeU,” he said taking Vacla by the arm. 


226 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“I have not seen Mr. Melfoi't for some time. 
Where has he been hiding?” 

Vacla looked abstractedly at Kaneuji’s tie, 
his mouth gradually shut hard in a line. Behind 
them was the phosphorescent life of the city. 
The roar of motor cars, the power jerked on 
and off. Vacla heard it, but he was still staring 
at Kaneuji’s tie. 

“Lunch with me to-morrow,” said Kaneuji, 
“at Pierre’s, at one o’clock. The music is nice. 
The food is good. I have something to say.” 

Vacla was on the point of refusing until the 
last remark. But the habit of making the most 
of opportunity made him accept before he re- 
alized what he was doing. As though by 
mutual instinct they parted saying no more. 
"What was to be said would wait until to- 
morrow. 

That day he was more at peace with himself 
than he had been. Kaneuji had evidently heard 
nothing. It argued well for the rest of the 
world. And in a strange way he felt compen- 
sation, that his life had been affected by wide 
spheres. He had been caught in the ambition 
of Japanese world trade control schemes. Life 
passes from the known to the unknown. The 
big undulations drawing in the crowd had 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 22t 


caught him. And it occurred to him how the 
big events of life draw on the lesser lives of 
those on its outer circle, and of how every 
movement affects the hves of those near to it. 
The big undulations of life draw the crowd, 
just as the war penetrated into the seques- 
tered lives of the most humble. But although 
Vacla was more content there was that dark, 
strained look in his eyes as if he were hunting 
something. And yet there was nowhere to go, 
neither back, nor forward. He grew thin and 
lantern- jawed. When he caught sight of him- 
self in a shop window or a looking-glass he tried 
not to look. He wanted a refuge, a destina- 
tion. He wanted to get away from himself, 
but there was nothing to get hold of. It was 
spring. There was the uplift in the air, the 
buoyapcx the sky as if it were rising. He 
saw a young man meet a girl as if he had put 
his hope in her. A sallow-faced young clerk 
and an unattractive girl, untidy, heels down- 
trodden, no gloves, but sKght she was and 
young and eager. Two dreadfully mediocre 
people, but interesting on account of their 
eagerness for each other. 

“Perfection,” said Vacla, “is death.” He 
might have added, “so is boigduui.” Only 


228 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


eagerness, keenness, desire are life, intense life. 
The wish for someone or something, that 
[makes the sun rise; that makes the world go 
round. 

t As he looked at the sallow-faced young clerk 
and the little down-at-heel stenographer, be- 
come interesting on account of their rapture, 
their enthusiasm, Vacla suddenly thought of 
Natalie. A warm strong feeling for her came 
up in him. Would she be strong enough, big 
enough to keep his interest? He wanted a 
destination, someone to depend on. In his 
thoughts this someone had been always his 
mother. He had this sudden, flaring hope, that 
Natalie might grip him, might hold him from 
the eddies, the whirling currents, that attract 
the disillusioned and the unsuccessful. 

People were coming and going up and down 
Fifth Avenue, dark figures against a moving 
background, wandering in a bhnd way through 
the endless traffic. The traffic, the struggle, 
what was it all for? Now that he had nothing 
to do, he was thinking of them, these people in 
the maelstrom of existence. Still there was a 
common gesture, an impulse to be foimd in 
rich and poor, in the learned and the imlearned, 
in those who believed in the hereafter, and those 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 229 


who did not. He watched, and one and all 
clutched at personal happiness. Far away was 
the clinking of time, the going over the horizon, 
the end of life, but one and all tried to be happy 
once for a moment. It was the common in- 
stinct of humanity. 

He was rather excited at the idea of lunching 
with Kaneuji on the morrow. He would be 
disappointed if the interview brought forth 
nothing. 

“Yes,” said Vacla, “I will see him, and if he 
doesn’t explain I will wring his throat.” 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


Each day, each moment of life speaks a 
new thought, brings a new message, and we 
do not know to-day what views we may hold 
to-morrow. It is this plast ic character that 
makes it impossible to get a conception of life 
from any book. 

On the morrow Vacla met Kaneuji at 
Pierre’s, but the orchestra although good was 
loud, and the tables were filled, and the noise 
of the music and the chatter of voices made it 
impossible to carry on a serious conversation. 

Kaneuji suggested that Vacla return with 
him to the office, his sitting-room at the hotel 
which he was pleased to call his office. 

As they got into the taxi, Kaneuji laughed. 

“Why do you laugh?” 

“I see Vinevar,” said Kaneuji. “Although 
it is April he is covered with a gable rug. That 
man is always cold. It is a coldness of the tem- 
perament.” 

At the name Vinevar, Vacla appeared ner- 
vous though he tried to seem unmoved. 

230 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


231 


Kaneuji watched him. “How clever he is,” 
thought Vacla, “he has mentioned Vinevar to 
see how I will take it.” 

“One must live,” said Kaneuji, “as the bird 
flies. If it wants to fly south, it flies south.” 

When they reached Kaneuji’s rooms, they 
were still arguing. 

“All men are my brothers,” said Kaneuji, 
“and in woman I find no attraction.” 

Vacla saw his opening. 

“If all men are your brothers, then just 
what did you have against me?” he asked. 

“You believe that I had something against 
you?” 

“How can I help it?” 

Kaneuji shook his head. “I live like a bird,” 
he said gravely. “I know that the cold will 
come and that I must go south, but I am some- 
times forced to vary my route, not because 
there is any doubt of the destination, but be- 
cause of circumstances which may arise.” 

Thinking he was playing with him, Vacla 
rounded on him. 

“You must make a clean breast of it,” he 
muttered. “Why did you betray me? You 
wanted information. I gave it. Why did you 
sell me back to Vinevar?” 


232 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Vacla’s face looked ghastly in its excitement. 
Kaneuji was expressionless as though his face 
was made of papier mache. One would have 
said that he did not hear, he sat so motionless, 
so unperturbed. 

Erect and resolute Vaela attacked him. 

“I sold you the secrets of the Jews,” he said. 
“I told you about the extent and price of the 
cotton lands. I told you and put you in touch 
with the agents who were to negotiate the deed. 
For this information you gave me a piece of 
jade and a promise of a percentage for ten 
years on aU production resulting from this 
transaction. What follows? I am betrayed by 
my servant a man of your race, who allows 
Vinevar to surprise me, and I am allowed not 
only to appear the uttermost fool, but put in 
such a position, that Vinevar threatens that if 
I do not disappear from his horizon absolutely, 
he will utterly and publicly ruin me. So I sell 
my belongings and disappear.” 

“Yes,” said Kaneuji, “yes.” 

“I have sought this interview that I might 
force you to tell me what you mean. What is 
the meaning of this change of attitude on your 
part? Like a phantom I vanish in the night. 
Like an outcast I disappear. Other men sell 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 233 


secrets. Other men, what we call, give the 
goods away. It is not honourable, but it is 
profitable. They do it and are not ruined. 
Why am I alone forced to abandon my posi- 
tion? What do you mean?” 

As Vacla talked, Kaneuji looked like a 
Buddha, full of wisdom and strange secrets 
and expressionless. 

“Why,” repeated Vacla, “am I brought to 
such a pass? I have been thinking it over, and 
the punishment is out of proportion to what 
I have done.” 

Kaneuji still preserved an Oriental stillness, 
as Vacla talked on hke a child with hurt pride. 
Amid this stillness, this philosophic indifference, 
Vacla asked again, “Why have you brought 
me to this pass?” 

“It is not I,” said Kaneuji at last, “who has 
brought you to this. It is the bugbear of 
America. You have bent to it like a reed to 
the wind.” 

“What on earth do you mean?” exclaimed 
Vacla, “what is the bugbear of America?” 

“The Gentile fear of the power of the Jew,” 
answered Kaneuji. “Vinevar has bewitched 
you. You are afraid of his shadow. 

“The Jews are clever, we are cleverer. 


234 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Whatever shall thwart us at the beginning, we 
shall surely triumph at last.” 

“But you sold me,” interrupted Vacla, “you 
told Vinevar, how else could he have known?” 

“In the pathway of life are steep and diffiv 
cult places,” said Kaneuji. “I let you be 
taken in that trap, because it was impossible 
for us to make use of the information you gave 
me. The Jews are too strong. AVhen we 
found it impossible to make use of the informa- 
tion, your Japanese servant was allowed to" 
take a bribe and surprise you. Japan wants 
seemingly to hold no information that she is 
not using. We pick from the brains of the 
Oriental and the European alike. In half a 
century we will astonish the world, we with 
our vast doctrine of Buddhist impermanency. 
The sun and the moon will perish. In the 
beginning things were fixed, in the end they 
separate. Sakra with all his attendants will 
disappear. All life inherits the quality of ^s- 
sqlutipn, but in spite of the unstable, imper- 
manent, dis inte grating qualities of life, Japan 
will make her claim for place among the na- 
tions. And in every bid that we make to rmder- 
sell the artisans of the Occident, is the sorrow 
and the patience of Japan.” 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 235 


Kaneuji’s eyes closed for a moment, then he 
resumed: 

“Japanese trade is operated by a clique as 
exclusive and as strong as that of the Jews. To 
show you, a British firm brought a suit against 
a Japanese firm in a Japanese court. It won. 
A judgment of a large sum. The Japanese 
firm expressed itself ready to pay, but the Jap- 
anese guild told the triumphant English firm, 
that in case it forced payment, it would be boy- 
cotted in the industrial centres of Europe in 
such a manner that ruin would be inevitable. 
We use the boycott. The Jews use, too, the 
boycott. Tfie individual seeks to escape from 
his thraldom by exceptional qualities. He tries 
to win financial independence, and he must be 
exceptional in his quahfications, because thou- 
sands of others are seeking to do the same. 
The nations too are seeking each of them to 
take first place. And those nations who have 
achieved are those nations whose integral parts 
work together. In its loyalty to its own Race- 
Soul, you have the secret of the strength of 
Jewish power. The Japanese looks upon this 
life as the resting-place of a traveller journey- 
ing. So although we know that the traveller 
must leave the resting-place, we do what we 


236 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


can for our country while we are here. The 
follower of Buddha knows nothing of his 
former lives, or of his future hves, but of his 
former lives his instinct tells him, that even for 
a thousand times a thousand shall he be forced 
to face a weakness in his character until he shall 
have overcome it. There is no escape from the 
supreme necessity of service to the race. The 
unhappy spirits do not attract our attention. 
Emptiness, they are but emptiness, but the 
great man attracts, his evolutions are finished 
and he will return to this earth no more. The 
pride of self is broken down and the Ego is 
merged into the Cosmos. Japan is great with 
the greatness of Japan.” 

Seeing that Vacla listened with great atten- 
tion, Kaneuji became more personal. 

“By the force of Karma, Melfort, you will 
learn. Your life has been caught on the edge 
of the vorfex, hke the lives of millions of others, 
and is predetermined by the influence of 
Karma.” 

“These men,” thought Vacla, “think I am 
not capable of understanding what they un- 
derstand, but I am beginning to understand 
the mechanism, the wheels within wheels.” 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 237 


“Some of that is rubbish,” said Vacla. “I 
suppose a man can’t see his way clear.” 

Kaneuji shook his head. 

“The way is nothing,” he said. “The way 
does not matter. The destination is what 
counts. Man moves along an endless road.” 

Vacla looked hard at Kaneuji and replied 
angrily, “With your trickery you have upset 
me, got me to such a pass, that I have no way 
at all.” 

“I plotted against you,” answered Kaneuji, 
slowly, “but it was your fear of Vinevar’s 
power that made you do as he said. No water 
comes into the boat, if there is no hole.” 

In listening to the expressionless quiet of this 
little man, Vacla was convinced that he had 
acted the part of a scared fool. In an awkward 
way he had tried to find out what had been the 
Japanese idea in throwing him over. He gath- 
ered that he had been used as a pawn. He 
noted mechanically, that Kaneuji had changed 
his position, was in fact watching him intently. 
It was a scene, however, that Vacla had never 
rehearsed. A kind of defensive irony welled 
up in him, still he noted Kaneuji’s changed 
position. Prudently the Oriental spoke. 

“Well, Melfort?” an enigmatic smile curled 


238 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


his lips, “we are,” said Kaneuji, “a nation 
whose foreign trade has grown entirely with- 
out a corresponding capital, and yet — our suc- 
cess has not caused us to forget what possibili- 
ties change may have. I mean in the manner 
of employing new tools, new weapons. I 
think,” said Kaneuji slowly, “we might use a 
new tool.” 

Vacla pricked up his ears. 

Kaneuji continued in a languid, patronising 
manner. 

“Human life is composite. The soul is a 
compound. Never, though, do its elements 
combine twice in the same way. Business com- 
binations, too, it is sometimes necessary to vary. 
I think that we might use a new tool.” 

When Vinevar made a proposition little 
brown devils danced in his eyes. Not so 
Kaneuji. His features seemed immovable. 
Vacla’s expression had changed. It was fur- 
tive, expectant. 

“Look here,” said Vacla becoming excited. 
“You tricked me. Perhaps you have ruined 
my whole life. Pray don’t be offended, but I 
think if there is anything you can do to make 
matters better, then you ought to make things 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 239 


better for me. Have you a position to offer 
anyone?” 

“Perhaps,” answered Kaneuji slowly. 

“You have something to offer?” 

“Perhaps.” 

“Then offer it to me.” In a moment Vacla’s 
life seemed to have undergone a complete 
change. 

“What is it?” he asked trying to become less 
serious. It meant so much to him, he dared 
not show his real feehngs. 

“Truly,” answered Kaneuji, “I have some- 
thing, but it is not yet.” 

“I must live,” protested Vacla, “in the 
meantime.” 

Kaneuji nodded his head. 

“I think,” he began in his dry, uninteresting 
voice, “you can live if you sell the jade 
Buddha. Already I have had an enquiry. 
Duveen? No. But a collector, a man of taste 
is anxious to possess it. This is a remarkable 
piece. Through the august influence of the 
god of the temple I was allowed to bring this 
Buddha out of Japan, that it might work for 
Japan, that it might be sold for the benefit of 
her people. Within sight of Fiji no yama is 
a temple with an empty place, the place for- 


240 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


merly occupied by the Buddha. Although if I 
had chosen a god to bring to Mr. Melfort, it 
would have been Daikoka, the popular god of 
wealth.” 

“Man cannot be above hfe,” interrupted 
Vacla. “I must live.” 

“Yes, yes. With the price of the talisman 
you will live until you have orders to report to 
Tokio. You will live and you will learn, al- 
though now you worship Daikoka, that it is 
not the Ego which passes to Nirvana, but the 
divine in each being — the Great Self-without- 
Selfishness. You will live, you will sell the 
God of Japan, and you will learn.” 

Vacla left the queer little man who talked 
in monotones with a dry uninteresting voice, 
feeling that his dream could scarcely be sur- 
passed. 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


Vacla walked home like a man awakened 
from a dream. A misty radiance hung over 
Central Park; the birds hopped and ran along 
the ground, as he made his way home his hands 
deep in his pockets. 

“I’ve been no end of a fool,” he said to him- 
self. “I’ve been no end of a fool.” 

He was awakened from the clutch of Dai- 
koka. He had been drawn into the vortex 
obsessed by it, but now he was free. He had 
pulled himself out. Moreover, he had another 
chance of a career with influence to back him. 
He disliked Vinevar as one always dislikes 
those whom one has injured, but even in his 
dislike he could not underrate him. He was a 
great man. He could count them on the Angers 
of one hand, the great men he had met, and 
Vinevar was one. Kaneuji was a personality, 
but Vinevar was great. He thought how 
strange it would be to marry a woman of some 
Eastern race and pierce through the different 
customs, manners, habits to the emotions. 

241 


242 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Surely the emotions must be the same, and yet 
are they? Song is the outcome of some emo- 
tion, some feehng trying to express itself, and 
the songs of the East are often almost repellent 
to Western ears. No. Japan must be different 
not only in its thoughts, but in its feelings in 
the centres of its being. One reason more why 
each nation should support its own flag. 

In Central Park the air was sweet with the 
scent of promise. The earth smelt hke the 
furrows in the fields, that have been turned 
over to be sown again. A new year, a new 
sowing, a new growth, a new harvest; the 
freshness of life maintained by the race, the 
work, the energy of the race. The race was 
certainly moving on over an endless path, go- 
ing over the horizon disappearing, but seed- 
time and harvest, the sowing and the reaping 
remained, were continued, carried on from one 
generation to another. 

He saw a httle boy in a straw hat trying 
roller skates flushed from a recent tumble, run- 
ning to his mother to be comforted, and a gush 
of emotion from deep within his heart came 
over Vacla. He would never run to his mother 
again, never feel her hug him with that quick 
convulsive gesture she had. Adult life did not 


THE CAETIVE HEKH 243 


hold that solace. That was over. He was 
severed from her. That phase of life was done 
with, that milestone gone. But there were new 
pages in the book, other things for which he 
had found no time. 

It was the conglomerate life that smote 
Vaela. The little knots of people, the mothers 
and ehildren, the brothers and sisters, the hus- 
bands and wives, the separate units of the herd. 
It was too much for him, the meaning of it got 
home, and he walked more quickly. 

Kaneuji had told him to bring the jade to 
his office on the morrow. He would do that. 
Kaneuji had been eonfident of a good price. 
He knew the value of it. He would be so mueh 
the better able to dispose of it. 

It was one of those strangely beautiful days 
of Spring. The air was piu’e and moist, as 
though the moistiu’e would lubricate not only 
the physieal, but the thoughtful side of life. 
And the throng moved in Central Park this 
way and that. A motor rolled past him with a 
man and a woman. Their faces were expres- 
sionless and contented. “We belong to eaeh 
other,” they seemed to say. “We need make 
no effort. We can take things easily.” 

Vaela was obsessed by his new thought. 


244 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


There is the vortex and there is man, and 
sooner or later he is drawn in. 

If a man leave father and mother and 
brother and sister, he may achieve some great 
idea. He may wander from the herd and the 
protection of the herd, and in the isolation of 
his loneliness he may achieve; but at nightfall, 
when the flowers have closed and the birds 
have folded their wings and tucked their heads 
away — at nightfall the time when families 
shelter together; at nightfall how will he feel? 

In the deep dark stream of night, let those 
within the fold, whose lamps are lighted and 
whose blinds are drawn, think of those without. 
Let those within the safety and the protection 
of the herd give one thought to the individual 
who lives alone and battles in isolation through 
the darkness. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


Not long after, acting upon a message from 
Kaneuji, Vinevar went to bargain with him for 
the acquisition of the jade Buddha. 

Vinevar, the great Jew, the man accustomed 
to triiunph, to get his way, had ever since he 
heard of its coming to America wanted the 
jade Buddha. In spite of his ceaseless activity, 
his astounding success, like most great men 
Vinevar retained some of the qualities of the 
child. And one quality was pride in his ex- 
traordinary collection of pictures and jade. 
Now his collection of jade, although remark- 
able, worthy perhaps of taking first place in 
America, nevertheless would be greatly en- 
hanced, he knew, by the acquisition of this one 
large piece. So it was with anger that he had 
discovered the piece to be in Vacla’s posses- 
sion, because knowing the value of the piece 
and the religious nature of its reputation, he 
could not feel sure that even if he bought it in 
good faith from Vacla, that the Japanese 
245 


246 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


would not step in and request its return. He 
wanted to buy it, but he wanted to be sure 
nothing stood in the way of his being the real 
owner. 

It seemed to him, as he made his way to see 
Kaneuji, that this was but another instanee 
where fate played into his hand; where if he 
desired a possession eircmnstances combined to 
make it his. 

Vinevar dangled his eyeglasses on his ribbon. 

Kaneuji, immovable of coimtenance, mo- 
tioned to a chair. 

Obedient to an instinctive distaste to being 
guided in any manner even to the small matter 
of choosing a chair, Vinevar hesitated, then he 
seated himself. For a moment his features 
were controlled by his usual scornful smile. 

“The Buddha,” he said presently. 

“Is for sale,” answered the Japanese, “not 
in the open market, but a collector, not Du- 
veen, but a man of taste is after it. Knowing 
Mr. Vinevar’s predilection for jade, I make 
my offer to him first, I give him first chance.” 

Vinevar smiled like a man who gets his way. 

“The young Gentile — it was his.” 

“Ah, yes, but he is not so fortunate. He 
needs money, he must sell. You and I — old 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 247 


heads. We can laugh together. He took me 
in. I was to receive precious information. We 
can laugh together, because the information is 
of no use to J apan.” 

Vinevar narrowed his eyes. 

“It is of no use to Japan. But I feel guilty. 
The young man needs money, so I sell for him. 
The young man thinks I tricked him. It is I 
who am tricked, trying to find wisdom for 
J apan. But to help the young man I will sell 
for him the beautiful jade Buddha.” 

“That is an expression we always use,” said 
Vinevar, “when we sell. When we buy it is 
different.” 

Kaneuji paid no attention to this remark. 

“If I set my mind on a thing,” said Vinevar, 
“it is always offered to me.” 

“That may be. For the benefit of the young 
man I offer you the jade Buddha. It will 
round out yom* collection. Its price is high, 
but of that I fancy you will take no account. 
On the proceeds of this the young man will 
have to live.” 

“It is more than he deserves.” 

“Undoubtedly, you and I know that. We 
can put our heads together and laugh. What 
he sold me, I cannot make use of, therefore 


248 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


what he sold affects you not at all. We can 
put our heads together and laugh, but I will 
sell the Buddha and you wiU buy, and the 
young man will benefit.” 

Vinevar was convinced, convinced that the 
Buddha would be lawfully his, convinced too 
that it would round out his collection. Every 
fibre within quivered, his hand trembled as he 
felt in his breast pocket for his cheque book, 
he was indeed still showing the qualities of a 
chUd. 

“You will have to pay me a very beautiful 
price for it,” said Kaneuji with a shrewd wink. 
“There isn’t another idol like it in the country.” 

“I will pay,” answered Vinevar, and the 
words seemed to cheer him, to give him a sensa- 
tion of the power of his own wealth, “I will 
pay.” 

“In the name of Daikoka twenty thousand.” 

“Ten thousand.” 

“No. I say twenty thousand in the name of 
Daikoka.” 

More detailed account of the transaction 
might be given, the phenomenon which made 
such a transaction so easily possible. Perhaps 
the scorn of the Oriental for all things of the 
Occident made the acceptance and terms of 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 249 


sale and barter a thing more quickly settled 
than one would have supposed. 

“Fate would have it so,” said Vinevar aloud 
as he signed the cheque. 

“All conditions are determined by Karma,” 
answered Kaneuji. 

With his little burning eyes Vinevar de- 
voured the Buddha. He had paid the price. 
It was his. He, the disillusioned one, had come 
on a desire, a wish, and he had gratified it. He 
felt the power of himself even in small things. 
He rose and prepared to go. 

“What a man of mechanism,” he thought 
looking at Kaneuji. “So cut and dried, acting 
always oil given lines. The Japanese have not 
our subtlety. They are more ster^typed.” 

As the door closed behind Vinevar, Kaneuji 
spoke out loud to himself. He looked at the 
cheque he was holding in his hand and he 
spoke: “We give something and we get some- 
thing, then in the province of Sagami it is 
finished.” 

Even as he spoke he showed no excitement, 
no anger, no concentrated feeling, and yet the 
words he spoke were these: “Does the West 
suppose that we of the great City of Temples 
rob our temples? Does the West suppose that 


250 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


the ancient people of Japan rob these temples 
of their gods to sell them to the Occident? To 
the spirits in our temples, many of our festivals 
' are commemorated. Would we then rob the 
temples of those gods? Smely the august 
spirit may well rejoice, that under the tiled 
hne of a horned roof stiU lives the jade Buddha 
of Fiji no yama.” 

Kaneuji blinked his eyes. 

The jade Buddha bought by Vinevar was 
but a duplicate. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


Have you ever stood on a hill in springtime, 
early springtime, on a hill that overlooks the 
bend of a river that the winter has covered with 
ice? Have you stood at the beginning of the 
ice break and watched the pieces pile them- 
selves one on top of another, imtil after a time 
a break appears, that reveals the dark stream 
of the flowing river beneath? This takes place 
in northern climates in the life of every year. 
It takes place morally and sentimentally in the 
hfe of a great many human beings. 

There comes a time when the ice is broken, 
when the conventional habits, the sentimental 
ties, the ambitious hopes are broken, and they 
pile one upon another and reveal the dark 
streams of existence flowing beneath. It is a 
cataclysm, but a cataclysm of value, of great, 
far-reaching value. 

The ice had broken. Conventional habit and 
ambition were broken and the dark stream was 
revealed. 

Ten thousand, thought Vacla to himself, was 
2S1 


252 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


ten thousand, but it was no more. He knew it 
would carry him for a time, and he had great 
faith in Kaneuji, although the scheme which 
had wrecked him would not now go through, 
and he could not hope for a percentage. 

But Vacla was sick of money, sick to death 
of finance, and he wanted to get away to the 
woods, to the sound of the birds in the trees, 
and the call of the robins after the rain. He 
wanted to shake free of the city and his own 
disgust, to free himself of his despairing mood, 
for it had become clear to him that so far his 
life had failed, and failed not only in its 
achievements, but in its vision. 

Art needs care, but life for the most part 
looks after itself. In art as in society, there is 
the shyness of human beings who are gathered 
together, the unnatural stimulus of an accu- 
mulated detail for a scene ; but nature is unpre- 
meditated and free, taking the hfe which she 
finds, giving often in retimn a great and sim- 
passing repose. 

So as the shadow over his life was dispensed, 
Vacla thought with longing of the woods, of 
the streams that trickle musically over twigs 
and dead brown leaves, of the green places 
where the twin-bells have spread their vines 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 253 


over the moss, of the white-throated thrush 
which people have named the Canada bird, the 
bird that calls in the month of June when the 
sun is going down. For there are few places 
in the world that have more to give to those 
who seek their refuge than the wild Canadian 
woods. 

The spring comes later in Canada than in the 
United States, even in the province of Quebec 
patches of snow are often seen on the Lauren- 
tian hiUs imtil June, but the last preparations 
are hasty, the strong sun finds them and they 
disappear into the earth, or find their way into 
the trickling streams. To the crowded com- 
plexity of New York life, nothing could be of 
greater contrast than the great woods where 
here and there sparse trees admit the sunlight 
making bright patches in the engulfing dark- 
ness. Outside the forest the sky takes on paler 
tints, and in the clearings near the forest bor- 
der, at evening, one may see smoke arising 
from the chimneys of the chaumieres, the ham- 
lets, the small houses with their pointed 
shingled roofs with a chimney at one end and a 
window on either side of the door, little houses 
such as children make with their pencils before 
they have learned to draw. There is something 


254 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


rugged about the province of Quebec and it 
has an attraction, like the attraction of those 
reluctant human beings, who free themselves 
with difficulty from conventionality. With 
difficulty man surprises its secrets, it gives of 
itself reluctantly, hut those who in adolescence 
have watched the ice going down the river, 
have seen the ground pink with wild laurel, 
have gone forth with tin pails to pick the ripen- 
ing blueberries, or watched the wild duck flying 
along the shore, those boys or girls will always 
return on a happier later day to this vast big 
empty country. 

Vacla in New York knew that soon circles 
would be appearing on the lakes where the 
trout had risen; appearing and vanishing in 
the modest tranquil life of the wilds; and a 
home sickness came over him for the yellow 
sand and the gravel and the brown waters of 
a lake that he knew. The wish grew in his 
heart to return to all that he had known, and 
to give a permanence to those memories in re- 
living and renewing them. Very rarely in life 
can a sensation he repeated. Very rarely can 
one stand at evening under the pines listening 
to the lake lapping on the shore and feel again 
as one may have felt once, a renewal of some 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 255 


exaltation. “I found,” said Swinburne in the 
“BaUad of Life,” “in dreams a place of wind 
and flowers.” The passing quahty of hfe is 
that the “place of wind and flowers” remains 
but the dream, the quality of enchantment 
perishes, and is gone. 

Return to the dream places of childhood but 
do not expect too much. 

Vacla determined to go back to Canada in 
the time of waiting for Kaneuji to move. He 
decided to travel by the day train. And on the 
day of his departure, it struck him singularly, 
that no one came to see him off. There was no 
one, in spite of aU the time that he had spent 
in New York, upon whom he should have 
called before leaving. He would have liked to 
go to look up Isaacson once again, but as Isaac- 
son had never been near him, he gathered that 
Isaacson probably had no wish to see him. And 
so as he tore himself loose from the life he had 
been leading, there was no one to whom he 
must say “goodbye.” 

In the train, after first making a scrutiny 
of his fellow passengers, he took to looking out 
of the window, watching first the boats on the 
Hudson, then the shifting outline of the White 
Mountains, or the clouds of steam from his own 


256 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


engine blown towards him by a contrary wind. 
And as he watched the clouds of steam, he 
thought for the first time for many a long day 
of Natalie, and in a strange way it seemed that 
his own reverses made him feel more tender 
towards her, as he realized the narrow outlet 
and the cramped attitude of her life. The more 
he thought of it the more he realized that this 
life of hers was simple and commonplace. Yes, 
it must be very tedious and boring. He low- 
ered his eyes to the fields through which they 
were passing, and forgot Natalie for the mo- 
ment. 

But he was not to forget her for long. In 
the afternoon a newsboy passed through the 
train with some Canadian papers. Vacla 
bought a paper and after reading the financial 
column, the foreign news and the sporting 
page, turned to the social column. His eye 
travelled idly down vmtil it was arrested by 
Natalie’s name. He read that owing to the 
serious illness of her Aunt, that her wedding 
to Mr. Curtis Browne, which was to have taken 
place in June, had been postponed. So she was 
really engaged, really on the eve of marriage! 
That was interesting. Although as yet her per- 
sonality had not caught the depths of his, the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 257 


fact that she was going to marry another man 
pigjaed him tremendously. 

As the train passed along the shore of the 
Lake, he made up his mind that when he ar- 
rived he would call upon her. Her attraction 
for him had always been as if her attention, her 
ego, her interest dwelt below the surface, and 
he had to be constantly calhng these things up, 
constantly summoning them, for if he did not 
hold them, they would sink away again out of 
sight. So far he had rather had a surface ad- 
miration for her than an arresting attraction. 
Still he must have thought more of her than 
appeared to himself. She was not one of the 
type of the passionate wreckers of , men, the 
strong type of woman which takes what it 
wants and has the power of taking. Still there 
was this lure in her, this something that forced 
whoever was with her to try to make it appear 
again. 

The thought was gradually formed that he 
would go to see her. It was characteristic of 
his dominant nature that Curtis Browne did 
not occur to him as a real barrier. Probably it 
was a case of any port in a storm with her, and 
she had chosen Cmtis Browne as a possible 
means of escape. Vacla felt that fact as a bond 


258 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


between them. They were both trying to es- 
cape from something they had known. His old 
adventurous spirit woke in him, and at that 
moment he knew that he would try to win her 
for himself. A strange reflection occurred to 
him that he had no doubt of victory. She was 
not capable of achieving freedom for herself. 
Young girls brought up by conventional great 
aimts are not, their timidity has been tremen- 
dously fostered. He could give her freedom. 

About seven o’clock in the evening the train 
ran into the station, and Vacla following a 
porter who was carrying his bags, got into a 
cab and drove to the hotel. 


CHAPTER XL 


The thought of the future makes a man 
powerful. There is more than to-day, there is 
to-morrow. The uncreated may be created, the 
unfulfilled, fulfilled, little faces peep out of 
the clouds. 

Vacla lay on his back in his blue pyjamas 
and took the telephone from the bed table, and 
the sounds of the trains rattling into the sta- 
tion, of the noises of the town, came in through 
the window. He took up the telephone and 
rang up Natalie’s number and when she came, 
he told her who it was and waited for her to 
speak. 

“When did you come?” she asked, and went 
on to say that her Aunt was ill, very ill. 

“Aren’t you going to see me to-day?” he 
called. The telephone connection was not very 
clear. He began to enjoy himself, to be tri- 
umphant. He tried to detain her though she 
seemed anxious to go. At last he got a promise, 
that she would meet him at three o’clock. He 
sprang out of bed and went into the bathroom 
259 


260 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


and turned on the taps, and as he sharpened 
his razor, he whistled a little tune. The water 
roaring into the bath was an accompaniment. 
He tried to whistle something that would use 
it as a background. He saw himself in the 
square mirror, his hair sticking out like a nim- 
bus. His eyes regarded his features, and their 
gaze dropped to his chin which was powerful 
and strong. 

“I’ll get her,” he said calmly, as if her will 
were not of the slightest account. Over the 
telephone he had felt the quality in her that 
appealed to him, the quality in her that slipped 
away when he did not try to hold her, the ego 
in her that seemed to seek retirement. 

He slipped off his pyjamas and hung them 
over the hook on the back of the door. Then 
he let himself down into the warm soft water. 
He took the paper cover off the soap and 
flicked the soap along the top of the water. It 
floated. Then he took it in his hand and began 
to make a lather over his head. He had the 
whole morning in which to dress, so he took his 
time. He put on his clothes remarkably well, 
wearing them with an easy carelessness that 
was almost English. He knew the value of a 
first impression, and his clothes were of the 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 261 


best. Although he loved money, it was because 
he loved spending, not hoarding it. He felt 
triumphant, the conqueror, sure of victory. 

But that afternoon when he met Natalie 
and saw her pale face and the intent, far-away 
look in her eyes, as they rested on him, he was 
touched with a new feehng for her, because in 
spite of her gaze she seemed to remain neutral. 
At the touch of his hand, her eyes met his, as 
if there was a secret imderstanding between 
them. 

“Shall we go for a walk?” he asked. An d 
not waiting for her answer, he stepped beside 
her. “Come along,” he said, “we’U go and 
see if anyone has cut away the names that 
we printed on the steps.” 

Natalie would have hesitated to remind him 
of it. Men had such different standards, little 
valueless things mean more to women. She 
remembered quite well the day they had cut 
their names with a penknife on the steps lead- 
ing up to the moimtain slope. "Natalie and 
Facia.” 

“Don’t you remember?” asked Vacla. 

She laughed slightly with self-consciousness. 
“O! yes I do.” 

“There you are,” he said suddenly, “just as 


262 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


fickle as all your sisters. You had forgotten 
all about it.” He turned and looked at her. 
“Why are you always sad?” he asked her. 

“Sad!” she exclaimed, looking round at him. 

“Yes,” he said, “you are always sad.” 

“How can I help it?” she answered, low and 
intense. “I am always with the Great Aunts. 
I am yoimg, but they make me old. I want to 
be like other girls. I want to be thoughtless 
and not forever thinking how I am behaving. 
I want my chance.” 

“You’U get your chance, don’t fear. Every- 
body does.” 

“Do you really think so?” 

“I know it.” 

Up on the steps they sat down, side by side, 
to rest; Natahe with her brown-gloved, nervous 
hands clasped over her knee. She was wearing 
a coat and skirt of dark blue serge, and the 
white, tm-ned-down collar of her blouse suited 
her. Vacla took the hand nearest him. “Are 
you glad I’ve come back?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she said, but she moved restlessly. 
There was a dark, strained look in her eyes. 
She took no comfort from him. She was deny- 
ing the deeps in herself and they were rising. 
She was dreaming her yoimg dream. Vacla 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 263 


watched her; the sweep of her eyelashes as she 
moved her eyes. They were discovering each 
other. 

“You want a refuge,” he said, “a destina- 
tion.” 

Then he drew away a little to get a better 
look at her, and the next moment he put his 
arm around her. 

“No,” said Natalie drawing away, “you 
mustn’t do that.” And yet in spite of her re- 
buff, there was gentleness in her words. 

“Why mustn’t I? You must know I am 
fond of you,” he said simply. 

For a fraction of a minute they had come 
close to each other, with her next remark she 
thrust him away. 

“I am engaged to Cmtis Browne.” 

“Yes,” he said, “I heard that, but it is not 
true. You do not want it?” 

Natalie started. “I,” she said, “what I want 
is to be happy, to be left alone.” 

As she said this there was a strange longing 
in Vacla’s face, as if what had been begun half 
as a game had become in danger of being in 
earnest. Was it the hint to the male of another 
male in pursuit of the quarry? Was it the 
thought that the conquest might not be his that 


264 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


made it more desirable? These riddles he 'did 
not ask himself. If Natalie had been more 
versed in affairs of the heart she would have 
smiled to herself and known, that suddenly out 
of a flirtation had sprung something that bade 
fair to be real. There are some men born to 
defend lost causes, they marry wives who are 
grateful for their protection and care; but the 
woman with ideals, with the orthodox feeling 
for home and all that home means, would never 
have caught Vacla with that bait alone. In his 
dream of vulgar satisfaction in the preposter- 
ous expenditure of money, if he had pictvu-ed a 
mate at all it was one who would attract him 
and hold him by the wonder and admiration 
that she roused, more than by her worth, im- 
selfishness, or work for others. When two 
natures come together, the stronger eventually 
dominates the weaker. There may be mutual 
sympathy, there is never mutual independence. 
In the course of time, the vine will be found 
leaning upon the oak. 

“You want a refuge, a destination,” re- 
peated Vacla. “All women do. Sometimes 
men do. I xmderstand you better than when 
I was here before. There has been lots of 
water under the bridge since then. I imder- 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 265 


stand better. You want to escape. You don’t 
know to what, but you want to escape.” 

Natalie’s hand tightened in his. How often 
during her engagement to Curtis Browne she 
had wished that he would look at things from 
her point of view, that just once, even over 
some trivial object, he would put himself in her 
place and see things with, her She felt 

that if he would do this, some barrier that was 
between them would fall, some door in her 
would open to him of its own accord. And 
then she was wont to console herself, that after 
marriage he would be more understanding, 
more seeing, not knowing that what a man is 
before marriage he will be afterwards. It 
takes such a wonderful woman to make the 
leopard change his spots. 

Vacla’s strong fingers closed more tightly on 
hers. 

“You must break with this man,” he said 
after a pause. “You must not marry him 
without love, trusting that he will give you 
any happiness; hft you to any new sensation, 
because he won’t. I know about that. My 
mother never loved my father. She married 
him to get away from home. Like many Rus- 
sians she played the piano wonderfully, and 


266 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


she always said that when her feelings were 
too strong for her, she put them into sound, 
and the wind carried them away. Even chil- 
dren have their intuitions. I knew that some- 
thing was lacking to her, even then ; something 
that women feel they have a right to expect, 
and that life does them out of sometimes. Such 
a woman’s children feel it in her touch.” 

Natalie’s fingers twitched, almost imper- 
ceptibly. 

“It is a hxmger that if it is to go unsatisfied 
would have been better left asleep. It is the 
unsatisfied emotion that has made some of the 
music of the world.” 

Behind them they heard the footsteps of 
some people coming down the steps. Hastily 
they drew apart. When they had passed 
Vacla went on with the conversation, but 
Natalie sat with her hands clasped together on 
her knee saying nothing, within her eyes an 
expression of vague alarm. But as he talked 
on, as if thrilling to the sound of his words, her 
cheek glowed and her nostrils dUated. It was 
as if the spring wind were in collusion with him, 
bringing her the scent of far-away apple-blos- 
soms to steal from her her sense of law and 
order. For the boughs of apple-blossoms 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 267 


swinging in the wind, and the swollen streams 
rushing down from the hills, are part of the 
formula of the young year, the formula that 
makes a light smoulder in the eyes of the 
young, that makes laughter gayer, and the step 
lighter. It is a process rather than a quality, 
but its results, its momentary results are un- 
failing. The sun begins to be hot; the birds 
are singing their courting songs; the fleecy 
clouds chase each other across the sky. 

When Natalie and Vacla came down from 
the mountain, they both felt that things be- 
tween them had changed. 


CHAPTER XLI 


Vacla put off his fishing trip, and under 
the smile of the Spring lingered on. He had 
dreaded going to call upon his uncle, fearing 
the questions that his uncle would have the 
right to ask about his business, but although 
he went to the first interview with a feeling 
of dread as to what account he would have 
to give of himself, it was quickly dispelled, i 
“Glad to see you, my boyl” said Uncle 
Nathan. “I’ve been making my will. Old 
Ebbing has been frightening me about my 
heart. There will be a good sum from insur- 
ance, some of it will be wanted to pay my death 
duties, but after that the remainder goes to 
Wyndham’s boy.” 

The old imcle was so glad to see him, to 
have a chance to talk things over with him, 
that he hardly asked how he came to be there. 
Later, Vacla vouchsafed that he was there until 
Kaneuji sent for him to take up another job. 
Tea 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 269 


It ended by his leaving the hotel and going 
to stay with his Uncle Nathan. 

He saw Natalie every day, and every day 
the strong quality of him softened to her. 
Every day brought him a fresh glimpse into 
her nature. He observed her dejection on 
certain days, and on casually touching on it, 
would soon trace the cause, to worry over Aunt 
Anne’s physical weakness, or to her irritability, 
or some little incident of her domestic life. 

“You are a fimny kid,” he said to her once. 
“Some days you are so cross with your aunt 
you never want to see her again, and yet if she 
is even the least little bit worse, you are so woe- 
begone.” 

“The Aunts are my home,” she said with a 
little laugh, “and although I can’t see life as 
they do, they have been good to me and I am 
fond of them.” 

In his new access of hunger for her good 
opinion, he hkd dropped the subject of her 
engagement, not venturing to approach it, as 
its mention seemed to bring aU her worries upon 
her in full flight, and besides she had told him 
that the marriage had been postponed imtil 
September. Vacla had never in his life been so 
happy as he was now. He saw Natalie daily. 


270 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


he sensed their intimacy growing stronger, 
his old vmcle was glad to have him, and for 
the moment there was nothing for him to do 
but await the clearing of his prospects. 

Once or twice Natalie met him before break- 
fast, early in the morning when the moisture 
from the night’s mist was still upon the grass. 
Her face was very lovable to him. The curves 
of her lips he had studied daily and when they 
met on a neglected path in the early morning, 
it was almost instinct that made him bend and 
kiss her fresh and tempting mouth. 

Natalie was taken by surprise. It was a 
definite act of dreadful disloyalty to Cui’tis 
Browne. She was surprised at him, but in- 
wardly she was a httle surprised at herself. 

“Forgive me,” pleaded Vacla humbly, in a 
manner to show the length of the way he had 
come. “I ought not to have done it, but you 
must come to a settlement, you must break off 
your engagement.” 

She slipped away from him and stood look- 
ing so white and worried that at once his heart 
smote him. 

“I can’t,” she said. “Aunt Anne is so ill. 
They say any shock may carry her off.” 

To a young man with the least fire in him. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 271 


constant putting off is exasperating, but when 
Vacla saw Natalie’s eyes begin to fill, he 
changed the subject. 

“Don’t worry, my darling,” he said. 
“Everything will come right and it is a very 
honnie morn.” His reward was a smile through 
tears. 


CHAPTER XLII 


The young year, riding to its full, shot her 
charm upon her votaries. When she could put 
Cmtis out of her mind, Natalie was happy. 
Curtis who had gone a month earlier on his 
semi-annual business trip, Curtis the practical, 
but unavailing. She walked in brightness as 
one walks on thin ice that may at any moment 
give way. Curtis would return. 

But it was not the premature return of 
Curtis that dropped a thunderbolt into their 
Eden. It was a telegram from Kaneuji which 
read: “Report to me in three weeks, and be 
ready to leave for Japan.” 

Vacla recalled the last days not with any 
maudlin sentimentahty, but with a quiet earn- 
estness. The walks, the talks, the growing 
knitting of young lives in a new intimacy. He 
compared his life with Natalie’s, the brightness, 
the action, the brilliance, the travel. It was a 
good life. And Natalie, if he left her, how 
would she pass her days? Sink into the woe- 
begone attitude from which he was rousing her, 
272 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 273 


or else marry, escape to Curtis Browne. With 
Kaneuji’s telegram still in his hand, he de- 
cided he dare not leave her, he would marry her 
and take her with him. Excitement woke in 
him. He did not deceive himself that it would 
be easy, but he decided to bear her down. He 
began to wonder about that part of her nature, 
which belonged to love. Was it ardent? Was 
it awake? Was it strong? A fire was kin- 
dled in him which burned up fiercely? He 
would get her and get her then. 

When he met her he approached the subject 
at once. “I have got to go away. I must be 
sure of you. You must marry me secretly 
first.” 

Her dark, frightened eyes looked at him and 
then looked away. 

“I can’t,” she said quietly. 

“Why not?” he asked. 

“Aunt Anne. Curtis. It is impossible. In 
time, but not now. It is impossible. I can- 
not.” 

“I will give you until to-morrow,” said 
Vacla. “If you say No, I shall go away and 
never come back. You will be rid of me. Free 
for ever.” 

Her affection for Vacla was now the chief 


274 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


impulse of Natalie’s being. It carried her 
through her morning, her afternoon, her eve- 
ning. She was docile, anxious to please, help- 
ful at home, only because she thought of 
nothing but Vacla, counted the hours rmtil she 
would see him again. 

“I can’t bear the thought of your going away 
and leaving me!” she said timidly. 

“Then marry me and come with me. If you 
do not, all your fine sentiments are just words.” 

That hurt her and Vacla meant that it 
should. 


CHAPTER XLIII 


In her Aunt’s bedroom Natalie sat with a 
book in her lap. It was her practice after 
Aunt Anne had finished her morning toilette 
and had been put back to bed between clean 
sheets propped up by fresh clean pillows, to 
read to her until she fell asleep. That morning 
she had seemed weaker than usual, more 
fatigued and had fallen asleep almost as soon 
as she was back in bed. 

Then Doctor Ebbing came to the door and 
motioned to Natalie, who tiptoed out of the 
room. 

Natalie said: “I had better wake Aunt 
Anne, Doctor Ebbing. She would not like for 
you to go away without her seeing you.” 

The old Doctor took Natalie’s ear between 
his finger and thumb. “Such a pale strained 
face!” he said. He had known her from a 
child. 

“Doctor Ebbing,” said Natahe seriously, a 
flush suffusing her face, “is Aunt Anne so ill 
that sudden news might kill her?” 

27S 


276 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Doctor Ebbing bent down gently. “My 
child,” he said, “if anything is bothering your 
young head, better tell me, I knew your father 
and your grandmother, I have known you since 
you began to walk. Tell the old Doctor, my 
child, and in advising you I will think of every- 
body.” 

His kind tone made Natalie burst into a 
hysterical fit of weeping, and having once given 
way she could hardly stop. 

“There, there !” he said. “Come to my office 
at half -past-two and we will talk this over. 
Tell your Aunt I wUl caU again this after- 
noon.” 

When he was gone Natalie went back to her 
post to wait until Aunt Anne awoke. And as 
she sat there stiU and motionless, she made up 
her mind to consult Doctor Ebbing. 

At two-twenty-five Doctor Ebbing was in 
his office, waiting for those who came to consult 
him there. There was a bell at his elbow, he 
touched it and a maid appeared. 

“If a very young lady comes at two-thirty, 
don’t show her into the waiting-room, show her 
straight in here, I shall see no one before.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The Doctor took the book in which were 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 277 


written the names of his patients to be called 
upon that afternoon. He had hardly glanced 
through it, when Natalie was shown in. 

He placed her in an easy chair and talked to 
her for a few minutes about trivial things to 
set her at her ease. “Now,” he said, “we must 
be squaring our accounts, settling this little 
trouble of yours, looking things in the face. 
Things are never so bad when you look them 
in the face. Is it about young Browne? Don’t 
be afraid to tell me. I am as old as your father 
would be, and I wish to save you pain.” 

Natalie made a movement as if she foimd 
confession difficiilt. Dr. Ebbing helped her. 

“From two or three reasons I am inclined 
to beheve it is Melfort. He has come back. 
You are engaged to yoimg Browne, and you 
wish to be free.” 

Natalie nodded. “I don’t know what to do,” 
she said with quivering lips, “you say any 
worry, or shock might kill Aimt Anne, and 
yet if I could only tell her and break off my 
engagement, I might marry Vacla and go to 
Japan.” 

Dr. Ebbing shaded his eyes with his hand. 
In them was a tvdnkle, the twinkle of old eyes 
at young troubles. 


278 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“Oh! what shall I do?” 

Those words embodying all that was in her 
heart, were wrung from her. 

“You are not in love with Curtis Browne.” 

“No.” 

“You are in love with Vacla.” 

“Yes.” 

“Your Aunt is set on your marriage to 
young Browne, and you are afraid of upsetting 
her?” 

“Yes.” 

“Besides this, you have a wish to keep your 
word, because you have given it?” 

“Yes.” 

I “Well, properly speaking, you know nothing 
'of life. Take the man you care for; no woman 
has anything to give to a man she does not 
love.” 

“But Aunt Anne.” 

Doctor Ebbing considered a minute. 

“Whenever in my practice I have been asked 
to choose between consideration for the young, 
or the old, I have always chosen the young. 
The life of the old is over, the life of the young 
is just beginning, they ought to be given every 
chance. Your Aunt cannot give you a wed- 
ding now. Marry Vacla secretly and go with 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 279 


him, and when you are gone I will break it to 
yom* Aunt myself.” 

“Oh! Doctor!” 

“I think that is the best way out of it. 
Curtis Browne is away, you marry as your 
heart tells you, and don’t worry about it. Your 
Aunt is a fine woman, but old-fashioned. She 
believes in stern discipline for the young. I 
think modern ideas prove her at fault. The 
yoimg have need of an unbroken spirit to meet 
life freely and with confidence. The young 
bird kicked out of the nest must have no 
thought, that its wings may fail.” 

The bell sounded again in the hall announc- 
ing the arrival of another patient. 

Natalie started. Something was rubbing 
against her knees. It was a wire-haired ter- 
rier. She stooped down to pat him. 

“He is only allowed here, when friends are 
present,” said Dr. Ebbing; “sometimes I don’t 
know whether it is a friend, or a patient, but 
Tim always knows. Your troubles will pass, 
Tim knows it is all right with you.” 

Natalie felt happy on her way home. It 
seemed as if she had made a great to do about 
nothing. Of course, she couldn’t marry Cur- 
tis, he was apart from her, separate. When 


280 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Vacla’s hand took hers, it was not two hands, 
but one hand, two parts of one hand that had 
fbeen separated and now were joined. 

That night from her bedroom window Nat- 
alie gazed at the lights of the city. The stars 
were like diamonds set in a sapphire sky. 

“Life,” she said again to herself, “O! life, 
perhaps you really hold something for me!” 




CHAPTER XLIV 

One morning, two weeks later, Natalie took 
her seat on the rocking-chair beside Aunt 
Anne’s bed. Aimt Anne had finished her 
morning toilette, she had put on her petunia 
silk dressing jacket, and she lay back sup- 
ported by a pile of pillows. 

“Shall I read you a chapter, Aimtie?” asked 
Natalie. Aunt Anne’s face looked thinner. 
The hair over her ears was very white, and the 
impression she gave was one of extreme 
frailty. 

“No, child, I think this morning, you may 
read me a hymn. I feel very tired this 
morning.” 

Natalie gave her a wide, startled look. 

“Can I do anything for you?” 

Aimt Anne shook her head. 

“It is cruel,” Natalie thought. “I am going 
away this afternoon, and I can’t say anything.” 

“You’ll soon be better. Auntie,” she said. 
“The fine weather is coming and you will be 
281 


282 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


able to get out every day and get back your 
strength.” 

“Yes,” said Aimt Anne. “To an invalid 
the two important things are nourishment and 
air.” 

Natalie looked at the thin transparent hand 
lying on the counterpane, and she thought how 
much the summer air must do. The waters of 
change were rising. 

Late that afternoon Natalie peeped into her 
Aunt’s room, “Are you awake. Auntie?” 

There was no sovmd. 

Natalie tiptoed in. She wore her blue serge 
suit and a small black satin hat. She looked 
at her Aunt. She saw the thin hand, the thin 
features pointed by illness, the hair over the 
temples gone so white, and a sob rose in her 
throat. Quickly she bent and laid her cheek 
against the eiderdown. 

“Goodbye, dear,” she whispered. “I can’t 
tell you, because yomr generation is not my 
generation and between the generations is a 
great gulf. You don’t understand me, and I 
don’t imderstand you, but you did your best 
by me.” 

Aunt Anne stirred. The lingering beams of 
the afternoon sun lay on her bed, as Natalie 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 283 


tiptoed softly out of the room. Then with a 
sort of excited terror, she went down the stairs, 
picked up her gloves and bag that were lying 
in the front hall, and went out of the front 
door. She knew that in one of the city churches, 
Vacla and his Uncle Nathan and Doctor Eb- 
bing were waiting for her. 

At six o’clock at the chiu’ch door Dr. Ebbing 
met her, and with her hand on his arm, she 
walked up the aisle to where Uncle Nathan 
and Vacla were standing. Presently she saw 
that the clergyman was standing above them 
and had begun to speak. 

‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together 
in the sight of God to join together this man 
and this woman in holy matrimony!” 

Natalie remembered she had better take off 
her gloves. 

“Duly considering the causes for which mat- 
rimony was ordained. First, it was ordained 
for the procreation of children. . . .” 

The rector was old, he had lost some of his 
teeth and she could not hear him distinctly. 

“Secondly; it was ordained for a remedy 
against sin. . . .” 

She wondered why Vacla was so fidgetty. 
He couldn’t be as nervous as she was. 


384 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“Thirdly; it was ordained for the mutual 
society, help and comfort, that the one ought 
to have of the other, both in prosperity and 
adversity.” 

Vacla pressed the outside of her arm with 
the outside of his arm. She felt he was col- 
lecting himself and trying to reassure her. 

The clock upon the steeple struck the quarter 
of an hour. 

In a kind of dream, she followed the rest 
of the service. In a kind of dream she took 
Vacla’s arm when they went into the vestry to 
sign their names. 

Then after a little conversation they drove 
to Uncle Nathan’s where they had a hruried 
wedding breakfast, before driving to the sta- 
tion where they were to take the train to New 
York. 

Doctor Ebbing and Uncle Nathan saw them 
off. 

The train did not go until 8:10, and there 
were moments of desultory conversation. 

The chimes of the cathedral clock rang eight. 
Its heavy boom reverberated under the dome 
of the station. 

“The Aimts will be wondering why I am 
not coming home,” said Natalie. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 285 


“I am going right up there now,” reassured 
Dr. Ebbing. 

“Good luck, my boy!” said Uncle Nathan. 

“Long life and happiness!” said Dr. Ebbing 
and timning to Vacla he said. “There is en- 
chantment for the disenchanted.” 

They heard the sound of an engine on the 
next track getting up steam. 


CHAPTER XLV 


When they were alone Vacla closed the 
door of the drawing room and put his back 
against it. He looked at his tail slim bride ; her 
features that had not lost the innocent expres- 
sion that belongs to childhood. The curve of 
her young white throat, the droop of her dark 
eyes, betrayed the charm of youth. 

“Well?” he said, and the tones of his voice 
were deep. “Well?” he repeated, and held out 
his arms. 

Natalie turned to him, thought a moment, 
and fairly flung herself towards him. A 
tremor swept through Vacla under the sud- 
denness of this surrender. It was the first time 
she had ever spontaneously come to him. A 
shiver of excitement ran through him. He 
stopped — and their young lips met. 

Vacla put his arm around her. She threw 
herself back against him smiling into his face. 
Her metamorphosis seemed to be completed, 
her long-repressed nature had broken its bonds 
at last. 


286 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 287 


“Do you know what you are like?” he asked 
her looking down at her. 

“No!” 

tVou are like a lily of the valley on a bend- 
ing stem.” 

“Which means that you find me mushy?” 
she said laughing and leaning against him. “So 
I am. Take care. You are the chief man in 
all the books I have ever read.” 

“SUly!” said Vacla and kissed her again. 

“I shall talk of what I like,” she said wil- 
fully. 

They sat down on the green velvet cushion 
of the sofa. Vacla put his arm around her and 
they swayed together with the motion of the 
train, waiting for the customs man, the emigra- 
tion man, and the thousand and one oflicials 
who come to disturb those who joiu'ney from 
Canada to the United States. 

Later when he returned from smoking a 
pipe, he found her curled up, her bright hair 
which was a mixture of dark strands mixed 
with light tidied in a plait and lying on the 
pillow. 

With a leaping thrill of tenderness Vacla 
picked her up and clasped her in his arms, his 
dark cheek against her fair one. 


288 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


“I am not very heavy.” 

“No,” he said, “you are light as a feather. 
I covild carry you anywhere.” 

And when he lay beside her, she lifted her 
soft mouth to his to be kissed. 

“Kisses in the snow,” she reminded him. 
“Kisses in the snow.” 

“Assuagement,” said Vacla to himself. 
“Assuagement.” 

f The train was carrying them from the old 
life to the new, from the old environment, hab- 
its and customs, to a new environment, where 
md habits must change, old customs be modified 
knd the personal prejudices of each be moulded 
iito the taste of the other. 

The old life was gone, done with, tom up 
like a piece of paper, and when the red dawn 
showed in the sky the new life was beginning. 

Natalie lay with her head on Vacla’s arm. 
Tired with the excitement, the emotion, the 
events of the day, her eyelids closed, for she 
was asleep. But long after Vacla felt her 
regular breathing, long after the light from a 
station lamp showed him that her eyes were 
closed, Vacla lay, the force of his emotions 
surging within him, staring into the darkness 
of the night. 


CHAPTER XLVI 


The sight of Vacla lying in bed in the 
morning, smoking his pipe, always gave Nata- 
lie a little gasp. She saw that he evidently 
did not think it at all out of the ordinary, so 
after expressing her surprise that he should 
smoke before he got up, she accepted it, as she 
learned by intuition to accept unquestionably 
many things that at first seemed strange to 
her. 

She foimd him untidy, leaving his clothes, 
his books, his papers tumbled about the room, 
and it gave her a queer pleasure to follow his 
actions setting what he had upset in order. 

She betrayed a certain naive susceptibility 
to his most simple actions, and for a long time 
was extremely interested in his shaving. The 
i smallest actions of life are of interest if com- 
\piitted by those we love. 

To her observation Vacla always answered, 
“Silly,” proceeding forthwith to pretend to cut 
his chin, whereat she flimg a protest, and kissed 
his rough chin, getting soap on her own. 

289 


290 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


Great larks they had, over nothing at all. 

They were lovers, but they were young lov- 
ers. They did not eonfide in each other like 
older people, they eyed each other like two 
young animals. They leapt to each other’s 
arms. 

Vacla had unparalleled opportunities of ap- 
preciating her. Knowledge of something kept 
her from doing what he fully expected. Her 
composme, her queer little independence gave 
him a heartache at times. He was surprised 
at her attitude, she took married life with such 
ease, such reticence, such reserve, almost with- 
out effort she stepped into being the companion 
by his side. Before he knew it, she was adapt- 
ing herself to him, thinking of his habits, his 
point of view. There was an expression on her 
face at times like a young filly that rides hard 
at a five barred gate and takes it. 

“Bless her!” said Vacla to himself, “she 
means to do her best by me.” 

There had been moments when he had pre- 
pared himself for the feminine prerogative, the 
asking of questions, the first night for instance 
when he not only came in late for dinner, but 
missed it entirely. Men hate being asked ques- 
tions, in an absurd way, they hate giving an 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 291 


account of themselves. Vacla arrived at half- 
jpast nine prepared to tell what had kept him, 
(preposterously apologetic, but NataUe ran to 
the door, put her arm through his and 
squeezed it. 

“It’s awfully jolly you’ve come,” she said. 
Not a word about his being late. 

Vacla was too young to reason things out, 
but it was because she had accepted him as her 
mate, because she loved him that she fitted so 
easily into his hfe. When she handed him his 
cup, she gave it gently, with a movement that 
implied care for his comfort. 

But though Vacla in his cooler moments de- 
liberately paused and watched her, before he 
knew where he was, he was trusting her with 
his business secrets, talking things over with 
\ her, clearing his own mind by saying things out 
loud, taking her into his confidence. And very 
swiftly the effect of her innocence, her guile- 
lessness made itself felt upon his tricky nature, 
and he saw that anything that was not perfectly 
ihonomable, perfectly sporting and fair would 
have to be kept from her, because she would 
have no toleration, no understanding of the 
devious. 

His double dealing with Isaacson, his trick- 


292 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


ery with Vinevar might never have happened 
if Natalie had been there. His was the strong 
nature that needs the complement of a feminine 
nature, the virile nature that needs a quiescent 
one. And yet, “I meant to have you,” she said 
to him one day, “I meant to have you from the 
start. One does not choose with whom one 
will fall in love. Love comes. I would not 
have chosen you” — Vacla squeezed her soft 
rovmd arm. 

“Curtis would have been much surer, but not 
half so exciting,” she added with a smile. 

These were the lighter moments. 

But sex is a dark thing, an unfathomable 
thing. Though easier mentioned between man 
and woman, than between man and man, never- 
theless it holds its mysteries, its moods, which 
/ are hard to explain. 

In the first flash of his triumphant passion 
Vacla was happy, gay, carried away by his 
emotion; but there came days when he doubted, 
days when he wondered if in her innocence, 
her ignorance, her youth, she could hold him 
lagainst the storm and stress of life which he 
fsalready knew. On those evenings he bent over 
her, pouring into her ear all the words that 
passion could find, or forge, trying to awake 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 293 


in her some force that would stay him in the 
storms of hfe. For Vacla had a little, a tiny 
spark of the driving force of genius, the whip 
that lashes men on up the steeps of life and, 
what he wanted, what he needed, what he 
demanded from his mate, was that in hisAark 
hours she.^hould ho ld him hy some light and 
golden thread. 

Walking briskly through the streets of New 
York, driven by that hungry something that 
had pursued him all his life, in the lamphght, 
amidst the noise of the traffic, surroimded by 
the bustle of people, human beings with heart- 
aches just like his, Vacla asked: — “Will she j' 
hold me, keep me from straying where I should, 
not go? Is she strong enough?” And from 
the night, the unrestful night of the city he got 
his answer. “Not by her strength, or her 
tenacity of pimpose, will she hold you, but be- 
cause being woman she is weaker than man, 
because of your chivalry and her need, because 
she awakens in you feelings that are good, be- 
cause of these things, but more than all this 
because she is your woman to do with as you 
will, she will hold you against no matter what 
odds.” 


CHAPTER XLVII 

At the end of a June day, Natalie was 
waiting in their sitting room for Vacla to come 
home. She recalled her life with the Aunts. 
Already it was sinking out of sight, like land 
upon which one gazes back from the deck 
of a fast-going vessel. She recalled the thin 
figure of Aunt Anne, and the round, less aris- 
tocratic figure of Aunt Clara. She recalled 
the timid way they had of meeting life, and 
a strange feeling of compassion came over her, 
followed by a consciousness of her own safety 
with Vacla. When they came back from Japan, 
she would make Vacla help them with their 
little troubles. Vacla was kind really, he was 
just thoughtless. She would make him think. 

From the doorway Vacla stood watching her 
and as he gazed, a rugged tenderness overspread 
his face, making it bright with its happiest ex- 
pression. Natalie spied him and held up her 
forefinger. 

“I felt you watching me,” she said with a 
blush. 


294 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 


295 


“What were you thinking of?” 

“I have had a letter from Aunt Anne,” 
Natalie replied. “She doesn’t feel reconciled 
to you, but she has decided to forgive me. She 
feels now it is done, she might as well make 
the best of it.” 

“I am glad,” Vacla said, looking into her 
face in amusement. “We leave for Japan in 
two days, and being forgiven will make you 
more contented.” 

In every movement, in every word, in every 
blessed look, as Natalie would say, she was 
happy. 

“I am so proud of you,” she said simply. 
“When we come back, you must be good to 
the Aunts and let them see you are not like 
anybody else.” 

And for answer Vacla gave her a reassuring 
hug, which she seemed to know how to inter- 
pret, because she rewarded him with a grateful 
glance. 


CHAPTER XL VIII 


So it was Kaneuji who flung open to Vacla 
the door of Japan. Japan whose past is a 
copy of the East and whose present is a copy 
of the W^est. The land of make-beheve, of 
miniature gardens, and the clatter of clogs in 
her urban lanes. And partly it may be it was 
the charm that follows upon contrast, that 
affected Vacla, partly perhaps it was the 
softening quahty of married life, that com- 
bined to give him a wiser outlook. 

|As Natalie put it, “One man alone in a small 
ho'at cannot take the world in forty minutes.” 

But just as some men triumph over the 
world without and succumb to the world with- 
in, Vacla’s outward defeat had by contrary 
strengthened his inner world. Day by day he 
grew more appreciative of his beautiful, gentle 
wife, and day by day she gave him what his 
nature and his genius craved, an atmosphere of 
tender flattery and devotion. So that when 
black thoughts beat in upon his mind and 
strove to take their accustomed place, Natalie 
was there to dispel them with her presence. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 297 


Vacla had thought of Japan as the land of 
the tea-house and the geisha and the coimtry 
of brilliant silks, but before he had been there 
very long, he sensed what he jotted down in 
his note-book “as a hidden disposition of na- 
tional strength.” 

As his boat glided up the long channel of 
an inlet among the low hills, he and Natalie 
stood watching a fleet of sampans winding in 
among the little islands that Occidentals have 
learned to associate with Japanese screens. 
From the distance Nagasaki looked dingy, but 
they did not stop at Nagasaki, but travelled 
on by the Inland Sea to Kyoto, Yokohama and 
overland to Tokyo. 

It was Kyoto that gave Vacla his real idea 
of Japan. It was a strange revelation to a 
western mind to see people waiting in the early 
morning by the margin of a pool for the lotus 
to open. 

Tokyo he found noisy and smoky, and its 
forest of black chimneys and incessant shriek- 
ing of steam whistles reminded him of the pur- 
pose for which he had come. And that purpose 
was this: Kaneuji, a follower of Prince Ito, 
the Lincoln of Japan, had reahzed that cheap 
labour, the chief factor of success in competitive 


298 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


trade, was for Japan a condition of the past. 
For this reason Vacla had been sent to Tokyo 
to go through certain factories and discover 
where the installation of American machinery 
could further cheapen Japanese production. 
Kaneuji, the deep thinker, knew that Vacla 
dare not fail. 

When this study had been suflEiciently ex- 
haustive to enable him to settle upon certain 
concrete ideas, Vacla was to return to America 
and report upon the saving per yard, that 
could practically be effected by the installa- 
tion of the proposed improvements. 

And as he moved among these people, who 
have with such exact imitation adopted West- 
ern methods, he sensed always beneath the 
adopted exterior the Man of the East with 
his strange beliefs, his unintelligible thoughts. 
It was an American captain who awoke Japan. 
Would he have been wise to let her sleep? 

So their year in Japan drifted by and the 
days detached themselves from the calendar 
like the cherry blossoms when the breeze blows 
them from the tree, until the momentous day 
came when far out at sea a liner bound for San 
Francisco carried a little note for the Aunts to 
say that Natalie’s son was born. 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 299 


That year had been a year of romance, a 
year in the land of make-believe. The autumn 
moon, the evening bells, the wild geese alight- 
ing at Katata, the arbours of wisteria, the 
plum trees, the matsu tree, the tiny waterfalls, 
the pools hidden in a wood, the gardens of 
fancy and the gardens of dreams, all contrib- 
uted to a sense of unreality. Wandering in 
these strange unnatural gardens, they fell natu- 
rally into mutual confidence and knowledge of 
each other, until Japan herself came to be to 
them like one of her many bridges, that con- 
nect the banks of some tumbling stream. 

Startled, enraptured with the strange ter- 
rific beauty, Natalie clung to Vacla and the 
days went by. The terror, the agony, the fear 
of dying in this strange land would possess 
her, to be dispelled by the coming of Vacla 
from his work, and then a terrible, wild hap- 
piness would take hold of her like a sensation 
that is too intense to endure. 

So Vacla’s son was born in a country where 
the worship of ancestors is rife; where the 
worship of family ancestors directs every act 
of a worshipper’s life, where the ancestors 
sacred soul looks after family life. The 
Buddhist believes that once a year the spirits, 


300 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


of the dead return, A fire is lighted before 
the house on the evening of that day to guide 
the spirits home and on the fourth day another 
fire is lighted, “the farewell fire,” to cheer them 
on their way. Those four days are full of 
marvellous memories, when the living feel the 
presence of the dead. Vacla’s face was a blank 
when he heard of it, then, barely imperceptibly 
the thought crept on him. The beauty of it! 
If he believed it, it might bring back his adored 
mother to him. And the queer, half-mystic 
belief made its influence felt. Under the plum 
blossoms he sensed the strength of the Race as 
a Race. And he remembered the words of 
Kaneuji: “It is the great self without selfish- 
ness that enters Nirvana.” He saw in imagi- 
nation the dark multitude, prisoners to the in- 
stinct of the race continuing like a wind which 
has not yet spent its fury on its journey home. 

“Are you sorry you came here?” he asked 
Natalie. 

“No, I am not sorry, see what it has brought , 
to me!” she said, exhibiting her son proudly in 
her arms. She lifted her face that he might 
kiss her. “I shall never forget it,” she said. 
“In America I shall still see the plum blos- 
soms.” She seemed lost in consideration, then 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 301 


she said, “I wonder what the baby will take 
back from Japan?” 

Vacla answered after a little pause: “It’s 
Race Ghost. That the dead never will leave 
the living. My father, I, the ‘little fella,’ the 
seen, the unseen, we are all going on.” 

His hand lay lightly on her arm, he was 
looking beyond, thinking of his mother, won- 
dering if she could see “the little fella.” 


I 


CHAPTER XLIX 


A FEW weeks later a bystander watching the 
arrivals on the Empress of Japan at Van- 
couver might have seen a party of four. A 
man and a woman, Vacla and Natalie, a Japa- 
nese nurse wearing soft-soled shoes, carrying 
a small, but apparently precious bundle. The 
bundle was Vacla’s son and heir born three 
months before. It was noticeable that although 
now comparatively old married people, Vacla 
still paid Jiis wife^great. attention. In one hand 
he carried her dressing bag, in the other hand 
he held a bundle of shawls which are generally 
used in covering for members of the human 
race, that have only been one year, or perhaps 
two upon the earth. 

The little party took themselves to the hotel 
where they were to await the next day’s train 
to the East. 

At the end of the afternoon Natalie went to 
tea with some people she had met on board 
ship, the Japanese nurse had also some ap- 
pointment with a member of her own race, and 
302 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 303 

Vacla was left to watch the sleep of “the little 
fella.” 

He sank into one of the armchairs in the 
bedroom, from where he could watch the 
bundle in the middle of the bed. As he sat 
there, he thought how fate had woven his hfe 
into the ordinary lines of man’s life. He re- 
membered how he had wished to be icppadastic, 
strong, virile, different, and he saw how he had 
come to domestic happiness and the gentle 
pride of parenthood. 

Was he happy? Yes. Happy in his young 
■mfe, his love for her, and his infant son. He 
,had a sense of good and evil, he believed in 
'the existence of God and his own place in the 
endless chain. Fatherhood had given him a 
place. He recognized the tie of humanity in 
one generation to another. Love for him had 
taken the form of Natalie and “the little fella” 
on the bed. 

He had felt long ago that he must grab 
what he could, take for himself ; that the 
illngnry ties of life could uot eudure, that the 
end was disunion. What had he made of him- 
self? Nothing. Fate had made him. He 
thought of the personalities which had touched 
his hfe, Vinevar and Kaneuji, men of different 


804 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


race, of different creed, both without personal 
ambition yet both caught up, transfigured by 
what they must do for their time. And in- 
voluntarily it came to him that that was the 
great and pitiless truth which until a man find 
he is naught. The truth of the divinely alone 
while partaking and contributing to the illimit- 
able forces of his fellows. Fundamentally at 
last he perceived life’s tragic and opposite 
poles, the lonehness and the fellowship that 
exists in a generation. 

It was Sunday and the bell for evening 
church was ringing. He was going East the 
following day, but his little family went with 
him, they were his to care for, to cherish, to 
do with as he chose. That which the heart 
and the reason cry for was his. Let the bells 
for evensong ring on, let religion, the gentle 
habits, the significant sincerities of the people 
go on. They were the common actions and 
behefs that bound them together, and accord- 
ing to the significance of what bound them 
together was the strength jaLthe JEIerd — ^that 
mass of human souls travelling from darkness 
to darkness in our time, which we have been 
taught to call the Human Race. 


CHAPTER L 


When Vacla returned to New York one of 
the first things he did was to go to see Isaacson. 
Often in Japan he had pictured that kindly 
heart, that tired face with its roving eye, and 
he felt he must right himself with Isaacson, 
and that if he could it would be hke a gift of 
gentle happiness. Beyond Isaacson, hke a 
portrait of a King by Velasquez stood Vinevar; 
Vinevar with his own vision of the world, his 
own hatred of this earth where men suffer so 
much. Vinevar would not be so easy to win. 
Still Vacla had a plan to win even Vinevar. 

So he set out to see Isaacson with a kind of 
simmering excitement. 

The room into which Vacla was shoAvn was 
the hving room which held Mrs. Isaacson’s 
mahogany rocking-chair. Vacla watched the 
doorway as one watches a frame, that will sud- 
denly receive a picture. 

The portrait appeared in exactitude, wear- 
ing a flowered waistcoat, and carpet slippers. 

305 


306 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


The tired face lit up in a smile which instantly 
corrected itself. 

“Don’t interrupt me,” said Vacla hastily, 
“until I have had time to make my explana- 
tion.” 

And Isaacson the simple-minded, lonely old 
man waited, feeling that in spite of appear- 
ance perhaps he had been valued. 

He sat down and gently regarded Vacla. 

“I have been sorry, sir,” said Vacla, “really 
sorry.” 

“What makes you say so?” Isaacson stopped 
to ask. 

“Because I think that I can now do some- 
thing to prove it.” He outlined briefly his 
year in Japan; his work for Kaneuji. At the 
end he added: “I have now the placing of 
large orders for machinery. I wish to do that 
through your office. If you place it with Vine- 
var’s Steel Company, Vinevar may be led to 
forgive me.” 

By a curiously characteristic remark, Isaac- 
son showed that it was not the order upon 
which Vacla was laying so much stress that 
> was uppermost in his mind. 

“You have followed my advice,” he said, 
“you have been studying peoples. I tried to 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 307 


show you what I took to be life. It was 
nothing to you. For yourself you have seen 
another kind of world. You have made an 
adventure. You have put thought into action. 
It is well. How could I foresee what you 
would do? Did I not see you gifted? Did I 
Icnow that as a leaf detached from the tree falls 
"to the ground, you would return to the fold? 
How could I know what you would do before?” 
Isaacson was moralizing out loud. “How 
could I know what you would do in those first 
hours of life, when the physical and mental 
run together at high pressure. What do we 
know about others? What they tell us by their 
words; their actions; their tastes. There is so 
much they do not tell us. The road^f life is 
the great highway. Those who leave the high- 
way must be brought back. We are all pris- 
oners of the race, we may try to escape, to 
travel by some short cut, but we must return.” 

Vacla observing Isaacson as he talked, saw 
that the year had taken its toll. He looked 
more tired, more resigned. “I wanted to be 
different,” Vacla remarked. “I wanted to 
strike out quickly for myself.” 

The old Jewish financier smiled at the idea 
of originality. “Different!” he exclaimed 


308 THE CAPTIVE HERD 


scornfully. “You would offer your heart to 
the arrow. Our happiness is to be hke every- 
body else. We are made to live in the race, as 
one family. Our happiness is in the race. 
When we escape it is like a fish trying to live 
• in the air. Besides, there is no need to escape. 
JLife is great enough as it is. Athens in the 
/time of Pericles. New York in the time of 
I Vinevar. It is enough.” 

The name of Vinevar brought back the ques- 
tion to Vacla which he spoke out loud. 

“Will he forgive me?” 

“Vinevar,” said Isaacson slowly, “is an im- 
personal man. He has seen pitiable things, out 
of whose despair he can find no way, but in 
his green note book everything is noted down. 
And those things which bewilder and a^al me 
are to Vinevar merely notes. If he ever wrote 
the book for which the notes are kept” — Isaac- 
son left the sentence unfinished as if the mere 
reflection of such a thing were too painful to 
dwell upon. 

“And you,” said Vada. “You will forgive 
me for being such a damned ass?” 

Isaacson patted his bald head with his hand- 
kerchief. “Yes, yes,” he said, “all will be as 
before.” 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 309 


Soon after, Vacla rose to go, but not until 
Isaacson had promised to pay a visit to Natalie 
and “the little fella.” As he walked down 
Fifth Avenue to his hotel, it seemed as though 
life was supplying him with a key to the 
enigma of the people he passed. Money had 
been to him the symbol of every desire, the key 
of all earthly paradise. He had been wrong. 
Life held other, treasirres. 

The sky that had been to him a sky of wind 
and flame had softened to the colour of the 
eyes of his boy. And his life which had been 
the sea beating against a rock, had grown quiet 
with the drowsiness of peace. He had come 
closer to nature, to the fundamental facts of 
the universe. 

When he got back to the hotel, he found 
Natalie waiting for him in the sitting-room, 
and following his own train of thought that 
she had helped in his finding of himself, he took 
her face between his hands and kissed her sev- 
eral times. Natalie had known he hoped some- 
thing from the interview with Isaacson. And 
she immediately tried to calm him, thinking his 
effusiveness meant that the interview had gone 
wrong. When at length she asked him, he 


310 THE CAPTIVE HERD 

could not help replying with a smile at her 
naiirete. 

“You were so demonstrative,” she said, “I 
thought something was wrong.” 

They were interrupted hy the nurse who 
came to say that the baby had fallen asleep and 
she was going to prepare his food. As Natalie 
followed her to give some instructions, Vacla 
went into the bedroom and looked down on the 
crib with wire sides that held his boy. At first 
he had been disappointed in him, in his feeling 
for him, he had expected some great sensation, 
that had not come, but after an attack of illness, 
when his anxiety as well as his curiosity had 
been aroused, he found that on the recession of 
danger, a new warmth had crept into his out- 
look. And the habit of tiptoeing in to look at 
the little downy head remained after the occa- 
sion for it had gone. He was beginning to 
love him. 

“The little feUa” stirred in his sleep. His 
hand jerkily shot forward and lay on the top 
of the blanket. Just so, Vacla’s mother had 
often stood, looking down on him,, wondering 
how life would come to him and how he would 
meet it. Just so, “the little fella” in his time 


THE CAPTIVE HERD 811 

might some day be looking down on another 
small “morsel of the world,” 

I Isaacson was right. Not to try to be dif- 
fferent, but to go the way of all the world, 
brought the greatest happiness. 

Vacla put his forefinger into the little open 
fist and clumsily the small fingers closed around 
it. 


THE END 






















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